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English Childhood 
 
 By 
 
 A. CHARLES BABENROTH, Ph. D. 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
 AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 
 
 
 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 Columbia University 
 New York 
 
 SALES AGENTS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 Amen Corner, E.C. 
 
 SHANGHAI 
 
 EDWARD EVANS & SONS, Ltd. 
 30 North Szechuen Road 
 
English Childhood 
 
 Wordsworth's Treatment of Childhood 
 in the Light of EngHsh Poetry 
 
 from 
 Prior to Crabbe 
 
 By 
 
 aV CHARLES BABENROTH 
 
 Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 
 
 for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the 
 
 Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University 
 
 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1922 
 

 Copyright, 1922 
 By Columbia University Press 
 
 Printed from type. Published December, 1922 
 
 NORTHWESTERN PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 MILWAUKEE, WIS.. U. S. A. 
 
TO 
 MY SON DONALD 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following essays are based on a dissertation pre- 
 sented for the doctorate in Columbia University. The aim 
 has been to present Wordsworth's rather extensive body of 
 poetry on childhood in its true perspective against the back- 
 ground of eighteenth-century poetry. 
 
 In addition to many detached poems on childhood I have 
 used innumerable interesting lines imbedded in poems on 
 subjects remotely or not at all connected with childhood. 
 Such incidental lines, in addition to their occasional charm, 
 are essential for an understanding of the attitude of poets 
 of the eighteenth century toward childhood. 
 
 I owe thanks to the Librarian of Columbia University 
 and to Miss Mudge of the library staff for assistance in 
 procuring books and manuscripts; to my wife, for careful 
 reading of proof; to Professor W. P. Trent and Professor 
 E. H. Wright, who read several of the essays ; and es- 
 pecially to Professor C. S. Baldwin, who read the entire 
 manuscript and made constructive suggestions of inesti- 
 mable value. 
 
 The essays had their inception in the English Seminar 
 conducted by Professor Ashley Horace Thorndike, whose 
 wide scholarship has been at the same time an inspiration 
 and an invaluable guide in shaping the discussion of the 
 large body of material which represents the accumulated 
 effort of a century on the subject of childhood. To him I 
 am deeply grateful for countless suggestions, always pa- 
 tiently and kindly given. 
 
 A. C. B. 
 New York, 
 November 7, 1922. 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 I. In Our Infancy 15 
 
 II. The Growing Boy 50 
 
 III. Children of the Poor 97 
 
 IV. Education 161 
 
 V. Children's Books 219 
 
 VI. William Blake 262 
 
 VII. William Wordsworth 299 
 
 Index 397 
 
ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The aim in the following chapters is to study Words- 
 worth's treatment of childhood in the light of English poetry 
 from Matthew Prior to George Crabbe. For a true appre- 
 ciation of Wordsworth's attitude it is essential to know 
 the place of childhood in the poetry of the eighteenth century. 
 
 It is not the intention to review juvenile literature. The 
 object is not to evaluate poetry composed by children or for 
 them. No peculiar value is attached to the precocious verse 
 of Pope, Chatterton, or Wordsworth himself. In fact, un- 
 less their precocious verse incorporates lines on childhood, 
 it has no place within the limits of this study. 
 
 In the eighteenth century may be observed the beginnings 
 of many modern conceptions in poetry as well as in politics, 
 theology, education, and social welfare. This is especially 
 true with respect to interest in childhood. In order to 
 understand the poet's treatment of childhood in an age of 
 changing values, it is necessary to take into account various 
 influences that made themselves felt in the lives and thoughts 
 of English men and women as well as in English poetry. 
 Earliest of these is Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning 
 Education, which persists as a moulding force throughout 
 the century wherever the education of children is discussed. 
 Shaftesbury's Characteristics is a definite influence from 
 Thomson to Wordsworth. After the middle of the century 
 there are traces, often tangible, of ideas which derive from 
 Rousseau's Entile; and the effects of Revolutionary specu- 
 lation and social philosophy on the conceptions of Blake 
 
2 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 are obvious in his poems about children. The industrial 
 revolution, moreover, offered new problems with regard to 
 child labor, problems akin to those noticed in poetry as 
 early as John Dyer's The Fleece. The problem, then, is not 
 merely literary. In so far as poets have touched upon 
 education and social welfare it will be helpful for an un- 
 derstanding of their aims to observe the conflict between 
 old and new forces, and the emergence of modern concep- 
 tions in the schools and in the attitude of the public toward 
 children. 
 
 Certain themes that are prominent in Wordsworth 
 emerge faintly at first in the work of minor poets who are 
 seldom read now except by students of literature. These 
 ignes minores, in whose poetry there is not often grandeur 
 or height, indicate more or less clearly the changes that 
 took place in life and in poetry. The student can not, like 
 Bums, pass by "hunders nameless" poets and versifiers who 
 imitated their betters, but who prepared the way at the same 
 time for inspired poets like Blake and Wordsworth. Their 
 poetry is vital in a study that reflects forces which ultimate- 
 ly brought about epoch-making changes in the attitude of 
 men towards children in the home, in the school, and in 
 industry. 
 
 Although no hard-and-fast delimitation of the years that 
 constitute childhood is necessary for the purpose of this 
 study, it will be helpful to observe the ages of children as 
 stated by men of letters themselves. Age is sometimes 
 specifically noted in the title, as in Prior's To A Child of 
 Quality (Hve years old, 1704, the author then forty). More 
 often the poet merely alludes to the child's age, with the 
 result that it is difficult to determine the exact boundaries 
 set for infancy, childhood, or youth. Cowper's To My 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Cousin Anne Bodham recalls her as no more 'Than play- 
 thing for a nurse" ; she was "A kitten both in size and glee." 
 While comparing the ages of children in The Excursion 
 (III, 592-94), Wordsworth states thait there was 
 
 no wider interval of time 
 Between their several births than served for one 
 To establish something of a leader's sway. 
 
 The line between infancy and childhood is usually vaguely 
 suggested, as in The Excursion, by stating that the boy had 
 ''overpast the sinless age." Beattie is not specific in the 
 prefatory remarks to The Minstrel: his "design was to trace 
 the progress of a Poetical Genius, born in a rude age, from 
 the first dawning of fancy and reason till that period at 
 which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the 
 world as a Minstrel." 
 
 The paragraphs of Isaac Watts in the first half and those 
 of Rousseau after the middle of the century make it pos- 
 sible to construct a schedule of ages. For Watts the years 
 up to four constituted infancy; from four to eight, early 
 childhood; from eight to twelve, childhood; and after that, 
 youth. Rousseau carried infancy to the fifth year; child- 
 hood to the twelfth ; boyhood to the fifteenth ; and youth to 
 the twentieth year. 
 
 In Birth and Education of Genius, James Cawthorn ap- 
 proximates Watts's age of four as closing the period of 
 infancy : 
 
 And Genius now 'twixt three and four, 
 Phoebus, according to the rule, 
 Resolved to send his son to school. 
 
 Wordsworth, on the other hand, holds closer to Rousseau's 
 age of five: at the age when Luke carried in his cheeks 
 "Two steady roses that were five years old," Michael first 
 
4 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 made a shepherd's staff for him. Aaron Hill's The Dis- 
 tinction of Ages had carried the first period up to the seventh 
 year: 
 
 The seven first years of life (man's break of day). 
 Gleams of short sense, a dawn of thought display. 
 
 The ninth year was frequently chosen as the close of 
 childhood. Swift states in the Modest Proposal: *T have 
 no children by which I can propose to get a single penny, 
 the youngest being nine years old." Richardson wrote in 
 Clarissa Harlozve: "She never was left out of any party of 
 pleasure after she had passed her ninth year." In one of 
 the numerous letters in which he shows a true fatherly 
 tenderness for his son Philip Stanhope, Chesterfield reminds 
 the boy of his ninth birthday, after which he will no longer 
 be a child. Wordsworth is less precise in The Prelude. He 
 speaks of himself as "a child not nine years old," and many 
 of his recollections cluster about the period between nine 
 and ten in phrases like "Ere I had told ten birthdays," "twice 
 five summers," and "twice five years or less." In Michael 
 the tenth year marks a period ; at that age, when Luke was 
 "full ten years old" and was able to stand against the moun- 
 tain blasts, Michael and his son were companions. 
 
 Although it is clear that they were using the word 
 "childhood" without strict regard for age, there is no real 
 inconsistency among poets in their notice of these varying 
 ages as markers of infancy and childhood. Modern child 
 psychology holds that "childhood is usually considered to 
 cover the period between infancy and puberty, or, roughly, 
 between the ages of 3 and 12" ; but it also recognizes an 
 overlapping of periods when tests are applied to determine 
 physical, emotional, or intellectual development.^ In the 
 
 ^ A Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Paul Monroe, s. v. 
 "Child Psychology." 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 lines recalling his boyhood friend, Wordsworth felt free 
 to change the reading of 1805, "ere he was ten years old", to 
 
 This boy was taken from his mates, and died 
 
 In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. ^ 
 
 While discussing charity children in his History of the 
 Poor (1793), Thomas Ruggles seems to suggest that thir- 
 teen or fourteen was considered the close of childhood, at 
 which time the boy was expected to go to work. Mickle 
 refers to this transition in Commodore Johnstone : 
 
 As childhood closed, thy ceaseless toils began, 
 And toils and dangers ripened thee to man. 
 
 Transition seems to be indicated by Aaron Hill in The Dis- 
 tinction of Ages: 
 
 When fourteen springs have bloomed his downy cheek, 
 His soft and blushful meanings learn to speak. 
 
 In Ecclesiastical Sonnets (III, 23) Wordsworth gives 
 solemn expression to his regret that childhood can not be 
 extended beyond the age of Confirmation. 
 
 The Young-ones gathered in from hill and dale. 
 
 With holiday delight on every brow : 
 
 'Tis past away ; far other thoughts prevail ; 
 
 For they are taking the baptismal Vow 
 
 Upon their conscious selves; their own lips speak 
 
 The solemn promise. Strongest sinews fail. 
 
 And many a blooming, many a lovely, cheek 
 
 Under the holy fear of God turns pale; 
 
 While on each head his lawn-robed servant lays 
 
 An apostolic hand, and with prayer seals 
 
 1 See There zvas a Boy (1798), in Knight, Poems of William 
 Wordsworth, Macmillan, 1896, vol. II, page 58, footnote. 
 
6 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The Covenant. The Omnipotent will raise 
 Their feeble Souls; and bear with hi'- regrets, 
 Who, looking round the fair assemblage, feels 
 That ere the Sun goes down their childhood sets. ^ 
 
 II 
 
 Although the lines of Catullus, Martial, and Horace on 
 childhood are echoed in English poetry from Ben Jonson 
 to Pope and Gray, the limits of this study forbid even a 
 brief survey of childhood as it is noted in the Greek and 
 Latin literatures. It would, likewise, be i^^^ossible to do 
 justice to memorable passages in the Oi ^"'^"" 
 
 Testament, and to the many beautiful m .jiics ui 
 
 the Virgin and Child, the spirit of which is more or less 
 faithfully preserved in such anonymous songs of universal 
 appeal to the mother heart as My Sweet Sweeting, or Lully, 
 lulla, thou little tiny child, and the homely lyric 
 
 Fayre maydyn, who is this barn, 
 That thou beriste in thyn arme? 
 
 Neither does space allow even a glance at childhood as it is 
 frequently noticed elsewhere in Middle English literature, 
 for example in the Brome miracle play Abraham and Isaac, 
 in Chaucer's penetrating lines, and in the Popular Ballads. 
 
 1 Compare The Act, The Preservation of the Health and Morals 
 of Apprentices and Others Employed in Cotton and Other Mills, 
 and Cotton and Other Factories : June 22, 1802. One hour each 
 Sunday should be given to teaching the Christian religion, and Con- 
 firmation should take place between the fourteenth and eighteenth 
 years. It seems clear that Confirmation has been delayed beyond the 
 usual age of twelve or fourteen, probably because of industrial' 
 abuses of child labor. Schedule C of the Act, for better regulation 
 of parish poor children within bills of mortality, passed in 1766, 
 shows that children were at work as early as the age of six. It 
 specifies : "Where sent if past Six Years of Age, and in what work 
 employed." 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 It is, however, n'=^cessary to glance at the poetry of the 
 seventeenth century. The appealing child lyrics in the 
 period from the Earl of Surrey's The Age of Children 
 Happiest to Henry Vaughan's The Retreate have no paral- 
 lels at the close oi the seventeenth century. 
 
 Surrey's pensive mood does not prevent a frankly human 
 approach to his subject. Sir Philip Sidney's Child-Song 
 is not colored by moral or theological intentions : Sidney's 
 attitude toward the infant who can not sleep, although his 
 mother sings to,, him, is almost whimsical and, certainly, 
 human. Nichola|>I Breton's A Sweet Lullaby with rare 
 grace and •' ^(depicts a mother tenderly singing to her 
 
 child about the lather who "false is fled away." Robert 
 Greene's Sephestia's Song to Her Child (from Menuphon) 
 has all the charm, tender humanity, and lilt of Elizabethan 
 lyrics on childhood. 
 
 Much of the charm of these lyrics survives in Jonson's 
 child poems, which, however, begin to show traces of new 
 literary methods characteristic of the classicist school. 
 Although his lyrics reveal a conscious striving for formal 
 beauty, Jonson is still close to the Elizabethan mood. His 
 lines On My First Daughter, On My First Son, and An 
 Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy breathe true parental tenderness. 
 In these poems the personal attitude allows the expression 
 of genuine sentiments. The last line of the poem on his 
 daughter echoes a classical convention, but the father's heart 
 is in the poem. For so genuine an expression of parental 
 grief as is found in the lines On My First Son, the reader 
 of poetry must wait more than one hundred years after 
 Jonson. ^ 
 
 1 Compare On the Loss of an Only Son Robert Marquis of Nor- 
 manhy, by John Sheffield Duke of Buckinghamshire. 
 
8 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Several of Robert Herrick's lyrics combine with the 
 exquisite form of Jonson's poems a sympathetic insight 
 not to be found in verse at the close of the century. The 
 form and diction of his Epitaph Upon A Child and Upon A 
 Child that Dyed recall his master Jonson. A Grace for A 
 Child is characterized by spontaneous simplicity/ Her- 
 rick's To His Saviour, A Child; A Present, By A Child, 
 without losing sight of the human child, adds something of 
 the mystic fervor and spiritual suggestion common in the 
 most inspired passages on childhood in the seventeenth 
 century. This element had already appeared in the well 
 known Burning Babe of Southwell. The most exalted ex- 
 pression of the mystic longing for childhood days and 
 moods is found in Henry Vaughan's The Retreate. 
 
 Happy those early days when I 
 
 Shined in my angel-infancy. 
 
 Before I understood this place 
 
 Appointed for my second race, 
 
 Or taught my soul to fancy aught 
 
 But a white, celestial thought; 
 
 When yet I had not walked above 
 
 A mile or two from my first love. 
 
 And looking back — at that short space — 
 
 Could see a glimpse of His bright face. . . . 
 
 With these immortal lines should be associated the para- 
 graph penned by Bishop Earle in his Microcosmographie : 
 "A child is a man in a small letter. His soul is yet a white 
 paper unscribbled with observations of the world. . . . 
 
 1 Here a little child I stand, 
 Heaving up my either hand; 
 Cold as paddocks though they be, 
 Here I lift them up to thee, 
 For a benizon to fall 
 On our meat, and on us all. Amen. 
 
INTRODUCTION V 
 
 He is purely happy, because he knows no evil. . . . Hee 
 kisses and loves all. And, when the smart of the rod is 
 past, smiles on his bearer. The elder hee grows hee is a 
 staire lower from God. 'Hee is the Christian's example, 
 and the old man's relapse. The one imitates his pureness, 
 the other his simplicity. Could hee put off his body with 
 his little coat, hee had got eternitie without a burthen, and 
 exchanged but one Heaven for another." 
 
 On the one hand lyrics of the Elizabethan age give 
 frankly human and vigorous expression to themes from 
 childhood, while on the other the deep insight of Vaughan 
 and Herrick clothes in tender lines their sense of ''some- 
 thing more" than physical reality. Childhood in the sense 
 of the Elizabethan singers and their followers, who in 
 Vaughan carried interpretation to its highest spiritual pos- 
 sibilities, disappears from English poetry until in the eigh- 
 teenth century those sentimental poets who prepared the 
 way for Wordsworth take up the theme again haltingly. 
 
 In Crashaw's Holy Nativity of Our Lord, the shepherds 
 are named Tityrus and Thyrsis. Milton's On the Morning 
 of Christ's Nativity contains allusions to Cynthia, Apollo, 
 and Delphos, and On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of 
 a Cough to Jove, Elysian fields, and Olympus. In these 
 poems the tendency away from direct observation of chil- 
 dren and toward classical embellishment is as clear as in 
 Herrick's The Wounded Cupid. This poem reveals those 
 delightful toyings with the pagan Cupid which were to 
 dominate classicist complimentary verse ostensibly written 
 on the theme of childhood. 
 
 The education of the age was thoroughly classical. The 
 poets most studied, quoted, and imitated were those of 
 Greece and Rome. While exalting the classical standard, 
 men of letters restricted themselves largely to the methods 
 
10 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 employed by Horace and Virgil. In imitating these poets, 
 they aimed to use subject-matter susceptible of treatment in 
 the manner which they considered classical.^ 
 
 Poets of this school seldom show a vital conception of 
 childhood. Waller felt it necessary to justify his use of 
 English in the epitaph on the only son of Lord Andover; 
 and in a poem On English Verse he writes that poets who 
 seek a lasting reputation must carve in Latin or Greek. 
 It is hardly to be expected that poetry conceived in such a 
 mood will reveal a lively appreciation of children. Waller's 
 approach was artificial when he wrote that in the starry 
 night fond children cry for *'the rich spangles that adorn 
 the sky." His favorite choice of theme and development 
 is typically illustrated in St. James Park. Children do 
 not appear in the one hundred and fifty lines of the poem; 
 but a thousand cupids ride the billows. The poem repre- 
 sents a conception in which human childhood can have no 
 part. The subject is embroidered with classicalities be- 
 cause the gallant poet is interested in fine compliments. 
 Only cupids, the spies of Thetis, are of use to him. 
 
 Abraham Cowley, who helped prepare the way for Dry- 
 den, and enjoyed a reading public deep into the eighteenth 
 century, also reveals tendencies that carried poets away from 
 the Elizabethan tradition. As his classical attainments are 
 closely bound up with his school life, he has enshrined 
 the memory of his teacher, Mr. Jordan, second master at 
 Westminster. The master's virtues, his great store of 
 learning, and his simple character are discerned with difficul- 
 
 1 In The Complete English Gentleman Defoe satirizes classi- 
 calities: "Not an author writes a pamphlet, not a poet a copy of 
 verses, no, not to his mistress, tho she knows nothing of the matter, 
 but he draws a bill upon Horace or Virgil or some of the old 
 chiming train, and talks as familiarly of them as if they had been 
 brought up together." 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 ty among generalizations and elaborations. The unwilling- 
 ness of the classicists to treat childhood in terms of common 
 observation, and their imitation of the style and diction of 
 Latin literature, are clearly indicated in the artificial Happy 
 Birth of the Duke, in which the child is the occasion rather 
 than the subject of the poem. There is a clumsy echo like 
 this: 
 
 Time, which devours 
 Its own sons, will be glad and proud of yours. 
 
 Stilted phrases mar the effusion, which might have been 
 phrased as a poem of simple, unaflFected childhood, for 
 Cowley, as private secretary to Queen Henrietta Maria 
 during her exile, was intimately acquainted with those to 
 whom the poem is addressed. 
 
 Dryden's most appealing lines on childhood recall at 
 times the happy phrasing of Jonson, as in the Pastoral Elegy 
 on the Death of Amyntas and Death of a Very Young 
 Gentleman. His beautiful lines in the latter poem reveal 
 the growing tendency to treat the child in terms of man- 
 hood. The custom of magnifying the helpless infant into 
 the stature of a man, in part explained by the particular 
 subject, is manifest in certain lines of Britannia Rediviva. 
 
 "Poetic diction" is in itself, as an ideal of elegance, un- 
 favorable to the portrayal of childhood. Addison's Princess 
 of Wales indicates how childhood serves merely as a point 
 of departure for strained compliments. The general re- 
 liance on conventional imagery is obvious in a poem ad- 
 dressed to the House of Nassau by John Hughes, who 
 echoes the same classical parallel Dry den had employed in 
 his lines to the Stuarts. 'Addison's Campaign is a typical 
 illustration of the way childhood was noticed to heighten 
 eflfect in panegyrical verse. John Philipps's Blenheim reads 
 like an unconscious satire of the type. In the passage in 
 
12 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 which Philipps depicts infant suffering to heighten the 
 destructiveness of war, the situation is generaHzed and the 
 lines are crowded with pretentious phrases. 
 
 where cities stood, 
 Well-fenced and numerous, desolation reigns 
 And emptiness : dismayed, unfed, unhoused, 
 The widow and the orphan stroll around 
 The desert wide; with oft retorted eye 
 They view the gaping walls and poor remains 
 Of mansions once their own, (now loathsome haunts 
 Of birds obscene), bewailing loud the loss 
 Of spouse, or sire, or son, ere manly prime, 
 Slain in sad conflict, and complain of Fate 
 As partial and too rigorous, nor find 
 Where to retire themselves, or whence appease 
 The afflictive keen desire for food, exposed 
 To winds and storms and jaws of savage beasts. 
 
 In the mood of the classicists, childhood was a period to 
 be rapidly passed over. Like Dryden, Pope also employs 
 the rapid generalized summary of infancy and childhood.^ 
 Until he reaches the state of manhood in his summary, Pope 
 is not interested in details. The first two lines rapidly 
 carry the reader over the period of infancy, and the couplet 
 on childhood is noncommittal as to details. 
 
 Pope's Messiah was written in imitation of Virgil's Pol- 
 lio. References to infancy are uninspired. In Pope's lines 
 the child becomes an ^'auspicious babe" and ''smiling in- 
 fant" who will play with the "crested basilisk and speckled 
 snake." It will look with pleasure upon the "green lustre" 
 of the scales, and will innocently play with the "forky 
 tongue." Such elaborated accessories are out of harmony 
 
 1 The classicists were undoubtedly indebted to a passage in 
 Horace's Ars Poetica for this. See Roscommon's translation. But 
 note also the speech of Jaques in As You Like It. — Essay on Man. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 with childhood.^ In fact, Pope was temperamentally noft 
 fitted for the task of phrasing such a situation with Old 
 Testament simplicity. Homely surroundings were not con- 
 genial to his powers. "He had been at his best in the 
 speeches of the Iliad, and groaned heavily over the homely 
 scenes in Ithaca." Wordsworth cited Pope's Messiah as 
 an illustration of reprehensible diction. 
 
 Certain passages in John Gay's Trivia (1716) reveal a 
 close approach to realistic observation of childhood. Yet 
 even here Gay finds it necessary to use the machinery of 
 classical mythology. He traces the parentage and "secret 
 rise" of the "sable race" known as London bootblacks. 
 While writing of the "tide whose sable streams beneath the 
 city glide" he elaborates the legend of the goddess Cloacina. 
 She fell in love with a London streetsweeper and gave birth 
 to a child who "through various risks, in years improved." 
 Then follows a brief account of the first years in the life of 
 a London waif, with minute details of Holborn life, which 
 as far as they go rival in vividness the circumstantial ac- 
 count in Defoe's Colonel Jacques. The little waif's mother 
 finally persuades the gods to take the foundling's part and to 
 teach him a useful trade. Diana furnishes a brush made of 
 the "strong bristles of the mighty boar." The god of day 
 provides a tripod "amid the crowded way to raise the dirty 
 foot." Neptune contributes "fetid oil pressed from the 
 enormous whale," and Vulcan "aids with soot the new 
 japanning art." As Cloacina descends at sunrise, she finds 
 the "sturdy lad" musing over Holborn's "black canal of 
 mud," and bemoaning his lack of father and mother. The 
 goddess mother soothes him and directs him in the em- 
 ployment of the gifts of the gods. 
 
 ^ Compare William Thompson's The Nativity (1736) and The 
 Magi: A Sacred Eclogue for similar treatment. 
 
14 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The fine attitude of Elizabethan singers, and the gentle 
 mysticism of poets like Vaughan, are not to be found in 
 those poets who adhered to the school of Dryden and Pope. 
 During the first half of the eighteenth century, poetry was 
 largely didactic, satiric, and rational, so that little place was 
 found for children and the parental emotions for them. 
 Parents have always loved and observed their children, and 
 this affectionate regard has been expressed in poetry from 
 the time of Homer's Astyanax. Very rarely, however, be- 
 fore the close of the eighteenth century have children seized 
 upon the poetic imagination. The great movements in 
 thought and emotion which stirred the century tended more 
 and more to direct attention to the child. This attention was 
 both reflected and stimulated by the poets whose verse is the 
 subject of this study. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 IN OUR INFANCY 
 
 In tracing the changes which took place in the poets' 
 attitude toward infants and very young children, it is not 
 essential to take into account a very large number of lines 
 imbedded in poems on subjects not connected with child- 
 hood. Such incidental references do not as a rule indicate 
 that the poet is writing of childhood in a sympathetic mood 
 or with his eye on the individual child. Sometimes there 
 is a charming glimpse which the lover of children is not 
 willing to forget, as in John Philipps's Cyder, where chil- 
 dren are momentarily noticed while they are gathering cow- 
 slips. Occasionally, as in the satirical lines of Prior and 
 Lloyd, side glances to childhood are lively and enjoyable.^ 
 Most often, however, they are mechanical and serve merely 
 as more or less colorless examples to illustrate patly a point 
 which the poet wishes to emphasize. ^ For a right un- 
 
 1 Compare Cowper's charming lines On Obsewing some Names 
 of little Note recorded in the Biographia Britannica: 
 
 So when a child, as playful children use, 
 Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news, 
 The flame extinct, he views the roving fire — 
 There goes my lady, and there goes the squire; 
 There goes the parson, oh ! illustrious spark, 
 And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk. 
 
 2 Langhorne has been discussing innate ideas, and makes his 
 point ("No innate knowledge on the soul impressed") in the lines: 
 
 See the pleased infant court the flaming brand, 
 Eager to grasp the glory in its hand. 
 
 (Enlargement of the Mind) 
 Samuel Boyse's Hope's Farewell is colorless : 
 
 The joys you gave my youth to taste 
 Were but like children's toys at best. 
 
16 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 derstanding of the fundamental chang-e which took place 
 during the eighteenth century in the poets' treatment of 
 very young children, it will be necessary to observe poems 
 in which the child is specifically the subject. 
 
 The detached poem was suggested usually by the child's 
 birth, birthday, or death; but some of the most successful 
 poems are not associated with special occasions. Before 
 the middle of the century, poets as a rule addressed them- 
 selves to children of quality, and were interested in child- 
 hood rather than in the individual. During and after the 
 sixties, the democratization of poetry is reflected in the in- 
 creasing number of poems on children not connected with 
 the nobility or the royal household. It will be noted that 
 during the closing decades of the century the poet is occu- 
 pied not merely with childhood, but also with the child. 
 Although it is inevitable that in all these poems the child 
 should be closely associated with his father and mother, 
 special attention will be given to the poet's willingness and 
 ability to observe the child as an individual being. 
 
 Among the writers of occasional verse in the early 
 eighteenth century. Prior alone is regularly remembered by 
 compilers of anthologies of children's verse. His charm- 
 ing poems reveal a delightful urbanity and lightness of 
 touch that make him a master of vers de societe. He 
 shows perfect command of the adroitly turned compliment. 
 If the study of childhood in poetry were extended to in- 
 clude the poetic use of Cupid, it would be rewarding to con- 
 sider Prior's sensuous realization of this pagan god, who 
 frequently is a lively actor in the poems addressed to Chloe. 
 The poet's conception of the young god is so vivid that he 
 portrays him as sobbing before his mother Venus in childish 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 17 
 
 accents. To My Lord Biickhurst (very ^yoiing, playing 
 ivith a cat) shows Prior's charming treatment of the god 
 of love^ and is as dainty in conception and phrasing as his 
 effusions to Chloe. 
 
 The posthumously pubHshed To A Child of Quality 
 (five years old, 1704, the author then forty) is too well 
 known to need comment. Study of the poem reveals that 
 only three stanzas are addressed to the child as a child. 
 In the four closing stanzas she is treated as a girl and 
 young woman. Prior in his most sprightly manner con- 
 trasts his age with her youth. He may write only until 
 she can spell ; and he gives point to his feigned regret by 
 observing that their different ages are ordained to move so 
 that he will be ''past making love" 
 
 When she begins to comprehend it. 
 
 It is a frankly artful effusion. The child of quality is not 
 so much the subject as the occasion of the poem. Prior 
 expresses his middle-age interest in the child of quality, not 
 by portraying an individual child but by assuming an air 
 of playful gallantry.^ 
 
 Although more didactic, A Letter (to the Honourable 
 Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley, zvhen a child) is writ- 
 ten with a closer approach to the child spirit. The poem 
 lacks the delicate weaving of his other pieces, but in its 
 headlong tumble of rhythm reflects the merry Prior who, 
 we are told, delighted to be the carefree companion of chil- 
 dren. And no doubt he succeeded in convincing children of 
 his genuineness, as Peggy's later tribute, after she had 
 become Duchess of Portland, indicates: "he made himself 
 
 1 Compare Ernest Bernbaum, English Poets of the Eighteenth 
 Century, p. xxi. 
 
18 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 beloved by every living thing in the house — master, child, 
 servant, human creature or animal." ^ 
 
 The Female Phaeton was a favorite of that modern 
 singer of child lyrics, Swinburne, who called it the "most 
 adorable of nursery idylls that ever was or will be." It is a 
 rollicking ballad that gives no certain clue as to the age of 
 Kitty. Vain Kitty is inflamed with a ''little" rage at being 
 confined with Abigails and holy books while Jenny tastes 
 the sweets of society. She wishes to "quit the score" with 
 proud Jenny by making all her lovers fall. The closing 
 stanzas show all Prior's verve and lightheartedness together 
 with the finality of phrase of which he was master : 
 
 Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way; 
 Kitty, at heart's desire, 
 Obtained the chariot for a day. 
 And set the world on fire. 
 
 The charm of Prior's child poems lies in the make-believe of 
 the adult who can unbend far enough to enter into the spirit 
 of children and who brings courtly compliment, classical 
 reminiscence, and afifectionate admiration, all in homage to 
 
 1 Prior's Alma contains lively similitudes: 
 
 For as young children, who are tied in 
 
 Go-carts, to keep their steps from sliding, 
 
 When members knit, and legs grow stronger. 
 
 Make use of such machine no longer, 
 
 But leap pro libitu, and scout 
 
 On horse called hobby, or without, 
 
 Thus each should down with all he thinks, 
 
 As boys eat bread to fill up chinks. 
 Unlike his poems inspired by children of quality, these lines re- 
 flect middle-class child life as he might have observed it in such 
 a home as that of the common soldier and his wife in Long Acre, 
 noticed by Johnson when he remarked upon Prior's willingness to 
 descend to mean company after an evening with Bolingbroke, Pope, 
 and Swift. 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 19 
 
 the child of quality. Prior's poems represent neo-classicist 
 poetry doing its very prettiest for the infant and young child. 
 
 Ambrose Philips phrased fine compliments to children 
 of his patrons, but was so unfortunate as to bring down 
 upon himself the nickname "Namby Pamby." The term, 
 according to Mr. Gosse, was first used by Henry Carey, 
 author of Sally in Our Alley, in a parody mentioned by 
 Swift in 1725.^ Known largely through the contemptuous 
 remarks of his greater contemporary, Pope, Phihps is at a 
 disadvantage with his modern reader : "Gay is writing tales 
 for Prince William : I suppose Mr. Philips will take this 
 very ill for two reasons ; one that he thinks all childish 
 things belong to him, and the other because he'll take it ill 
 to be taught that one may write things to a child without 
 being childish." 
 
 Nevertheless, the poems of Philips show signs of a new 
 taste. He seeks a language of resemblance that will reflect 
 the sweetness and grace of childhood, as is clear from the 
 lines To the Honourable Miss Carteret: 
 
 How shall I, or shall the Muse, 
 Language of resemblance choose? 
 Language like thy mien and face 
 Full of sweetness, full of grace. 
 
 He traces the child's growth from year to year by beholding 
 the freshness of spring after spring, with each time a 
 "brighter bloom" in the child. Although this attitude in- 
 dicates a tendency to break away from classicist standards, 
 he is chiefly concerned, like Prior, with the conscious belle 
 who will exert her maiden reign over "fond beholders," fully 
 half the poem being devoted to a description of her future 
 courtship and nuptials. 
 
 1 The Dictionary of National Biography notes that the third 
 edition of Carey's 1713 publication contains the "Namby Pamby" 
 poem. s. V. Carey, Henry. 
 
20 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 To Miss Margaret Pulteney (daughter of Daniel Pul- 
 teney, Esq.) in the Nursery, April 27, 1727, is interesting. 
 The ''Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling" rhythm is attractive 
 but not sustained. Philips again avoids direct observation 
 in the thought that ten years hence when he has ceased 
 composing, ''beardless poets" will be "fondly rhyming," and 
 accusing "each killing feature" of the cruel maid. There 
 is a convincing touch in the lines on these youthful poets who 
 will be 
 
 Fescued now, perhaps, in spelling. 
 
 A Supplication for Miss Carteret in the Small-Pox, 
 Dublin, July 31, 1725, is a dignified if somewhat self-con- 
 scious prayer for a child suffering from the dread chil- 
 dren's scourge of the century. The disease was feared in 
 ail English households. The early education of John Scott 
 of Amwell was desultory because his father had such an 
 extreme dread of the small-pox that the family repeatedly 
 moved to shun it. Shaftesbury was shocked to hear that 
 the measles had been followed in his sister's household by 
 the small-pox "which I pray God were as safe over with 
 them." Lady Montagu's letters to her daughter, and her 
 earlier letters from Constantinople, frequently discuss the 
 small-pox; and her efforts to ameliorate the condition of 
 children by means of inoculation are well known. The 
 same high seriousness and dread sincerity which char- 
 acterize numerous eighteenth -century poems on the re- 
 covery of adults from small-pox permeate the lines of 
 Philips. 
 
 To Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in her mother's arms. May i, 
 1724, is the prettiest of his complimentary verses. Philips 
 shows felicity of phrase in suggestions of the child's heed- 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 21 
 
 less prattle. His charming analysis is illuminated, further- 
 more, by a pleasing image from bird life. There is freshness 
 and appropriateness in the lines which associate the sportive 
 green linnet and the wanton infant. In the early period it is 
 probably the first detached lyric that does not employ a na- 
 ture image mechanically in a similitude. It represents an 
 early effort to express something of the spiritual connotation 
 of the linnet and the infant by an imaginative perception of 
 the underlying unity of feeling. For once, too, the child is 
 not lost in the marriageable maiden. In an attempt to be 
 "simply elegant to please," Philips has written a masterpiece. 
 
 Timely blossom, infant fair, 
 Fondling of a happy pair, 
 Every morn, and every night, 
 Their solicitous delight. 
 Sleeping, walking, still at ease, 
 Pleasing, without skill to please, 
 Little gossip, blithe and hale. 
 Tattling many a broken tale, 
 Singing many a tuneless song, 
 Lavish of a heedless tongue, 
 Simple maiden, void of art. 
 Babbling out the very heart. 
 Yet abandoned to thy will, 
 Yet imagining no ill. 
 Yet too innocent to blush. 
 Like the linnet in the bush, 
 To the mother-linnet's note 
 Moduling her slender throat. 
 Chirping forth thy pretty joys, 
 Wanton in the change of toys. 
 Like the linnet green, in May, 
 Flitting to each bloomy spray. 
 Wearied then, and glad of rest. 
 Like the linnet in the nest. 
 
22 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 To Miss Georgiana, youngest daughter to Lord Carteret, 
 August 10, 172^, indicates an attempt to write from direct 
 observation. 
 
 Is the silken web so thin 
 As the texture of her skin? 
 Can the lily and the rose 
 Such unsullied hue disclose? 
 Are the violets so blue 
 As her veins exposed to view? 
 
 In their appropriateness to the subject, these happy parallels 
 are indicative of more than an effort to phrase literary com- 
 pliments. The willingness to observe such details counts 
 for much during the first quarter of the century. 
 
 The poems of Ambrose Philips are not as well known as 
 Prior's, but two of them are historically important as re- 
 vealing early evidence of a new taste. Seventy-five years 
 before Wordsworth he observed the green linnet and 
 brought it into connection with childhood. 
 
 In John Gay's lines To a Lady the child is the occasion 
 of the poem. Like other poets, Gay observes the "tender 
 mother" with her ''infant train," and notes every "dawning 
 grace." The children are perfect images of their mother.^ 
 
 1 Set phrases and imagery preclude vital treatment. These are 
 especially noticeable in the countless panegyrical and epithalamic 
 poems directed to members of the nobility and the reigning house. 
 These poems echo the earlier classicist use of cupids, charms, and 
 graces, or in a vein of strained compliment they felicitate bride and 
 groom on prospective joys of the nursery (e. g., Thomas Newcomb's 
 Ode to Lord Carmarthen on his Marriage with Lady Anne Seymour, 
 1719). Girls are invariably the image of their mother, and boys 
 always reflect the manliness and power of their father. Such lines 
 are without doubt echoes of lines like those in the Nuptial Ode of 
 Catullus, (cp. John Gilbert Cooper's Song to Winifreda.) 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 23 
 
 The early virtues of the son promise new-won honors.^ Gay 
 is able to focus his attention on the child only momentarily : 
 
 When he the tale of Audenard repeats, 
 
 His little heart with emulation beats; 
 
 With conquests yet to come his bosom glows, 
 
 He dreams of triumphs and of vanquished foes. 
 
 Each year with arts shall store his ripening brain, 
 
 And from his grandsire he shall learn to reign. 
 
 This is commonplace enough when judged by romantic 
 standards ; but in view of classicist unwillingness to analyze 
 individual traits of young children, Gay's passing notice of 
 the budding virtues and emotional reactions of the boy 
 shows an incidental interest not common in the verse of his 
 day. As in his lines on the sentimental apprentice who is 
 poring over one of Otway's plays at a bookstall (Trivia), 
 Gay reveals a willingness to find specific illustrations in 
 place of the customary generalizations. 
 
 Lady Winchilsea's beautiful poem On the Death of the 
 Honourable Mr. James Thynne (Younger son to the Right 
 Honourable the Lord Viscount Weymouth) comes from the 
 heart of the poet, and, like her lines that reveal fresh ob- 
 servation of external nature, is not characteristic of the age. 
 
 1 Prose and poetry indicate that the preference for male chil- 
 dren was strong. Compare the letter to Lovelace (Clarissa Har- 
 lowe): "May the marriage be crowned with a great many fine boys 
 (I desire no girls) to build up again a family so ancient. The 
 first boy shall take my surname by act of Parliament. That is my 
 will." Langhorne's Owen of Carron has the lines. 
 
 In fortune rich, in offspring poor. 
 
 An only daughter crowned his bed. 
 Shenstone's Economy and Glover's Leonidas indicate that the child- 
 less marriage was looked upon as unfortunate. Wordsworth's The 
 Excursion speaks of lonely cottagers as the "wedded pair in child- 
 less solitude." The dame awaits the return of her husband, "True 
 as the stock-dove to her shallow nest." 
 
24 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Far from being representative, the poem is exceptional in 
 point of view and choice of material. She writes with the 
 affection of a close friend. After she has addressed herself 
 to soothing the parents' grief, the boy's entombment is sym- 
 pathetically phrased and is the occasion for notice of his 
 ancestors, her intimate knowledge of the family adding vivid 
 individual touches which make the passage more than a 
 catalogue of titled names. 
 
 She tries to dissipate the gloom by rescuing, if she may, 
 the memory of what they ''lately saw so fresh and fair." 
 Among the ''beauties of his blooming age" she had noted 
 
 The pleasing light, that from his eyes was cast, 
 Like hasty beams, too vigorous to last. 
 
 She recalls harmless sports with his courser on the lawn. 
 He was sprightly as the "enlivened game," and bold in the 
 chase. 
 
 Yet in the palace tractable and mild, 
 Perfect in all the duties of a child. 
 
 For its time this poem is unique in the marked tendency 
 to close observation of an individual child. It gives inti- 
 mate glimpses of the child against the home background. 
 In many of her lines Lady Winchilsea is an early forerunner 
 of those poets who wrote at the close of the century. 
 
 Children are noticed only vaguely in Aaron Hill's lines 
 Writ Upon a Pane of Glass in Westminster House under the 
 names of his four children (1731). He notes that all was 
 happy in his household while a living mother exercised her 
 guardian care. 
 
 But, joyless, since their sweet supporter died. 
 They wander now, through life, with half a guide. 
 
 Francis Fawkes's On the Death of a Young Gentleman, Sep- 
 tember, iyS9y is preachy, and generalizes with little attempt 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 25 
 
 to individualize beyond the reference to the child's taking 
 away 
 
 Ere the first tender down o'erspread your chin, 
 A stranger yet to sorrow, and to sin. 
 
 The poet's sentiments are dignified and appropriate, but 
 there is no inclination to analyze the child's character or to 
 notice individualizing traits. ^ 
 
 The poet's devotion to his mother, which found expression 
 in poetry from Thomson to Wordsworth, did not at first 
 stimulate recollections of childhood. Pope, who through- 
 out the eighteenth century was held up as a model of filial 
 piety, expressed afifection for his mother in the Epistle to Dr. 
 Arhuthnot (1735). But he did not severely modify the pre- 
 cept of his school that there must be no display of purely 
 
 1 The eighteenth-century tendency to moralizing resulted in the 
 employment of generalized images that did not demand close ob- 
 servation of children. Thomson's method of generalized descrip- 
 tion is reflected in his treatment at the close of Spring, where he 
 contemplates domestic felicity with children at the heart of the 
 family. He phrases the child element in terms like "smiling off- 
 spring" ; he observes that "infant reason grows apace" and calls 
 for the "kind hand of an assiduous care." There is more vitality in 
 the lines which portray the congenial moral element : 
 
 Delightful task ! to rear the tender thought, 
 To teach the young idea how to shoot, 
 To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, 
 To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix 
 The generous purpose in the glowing breast. 
 
 Hill's deep interest in his children is felt in his poem To Miranda 
 (After marriage, with Mr. Locke's Treatise on Education). It in- 
 dicates that he put into his wife's hands the volume which would 
 serve as "a glass" to show her "what these infants are" in order 
 that she might "by this just light direct their opening way." Yet 
 he followed the literary method then in vogue, which allowed him 
 to rest in a generalization. 
 
26 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 personal emotion. He alludes to his tender duties in pro- 
 longing the life of his aged mother "with lenient arts" by 
 rocking the ''cradle of reposing age." 
 
 Ten years earlier, the romantically inclined Thomson 
 endeavored to break through this restraint in his poem On 
 the Death of His Mother (1725). He wished to give free 
 expression to his sorrow; face to face with sad reality, he 
 set out to thrust aside convention in order to write from 
 the heart. 
 
 Ye fabled Muses, I your aid disclaim, 
 Your airy raptures, and your fancied flame: 
 True genuine woe my throbbing breast inspires. 
 Love prompts my lays, and filial duty fires; 
 The soul springs instant at the warm design, 
 And the heart dictates every flowing line. 
 
 But Thomson can not wholly depart from poetic methods 
 of his generation. In the fluctuations of his emotion he 
 recalls how his widowed mother, her orphans about her, 
 often "upbraided her needy hands" that could not accomplish 
 all she had planned for her children. He alludes to his 
 brothers and sisters, whom she left behind reluctantly. As 
 is to be expected in a poem composed during the first quarter 
 of the century, his strongest emotion is revealed in recollec- 
 tion not of early childhood but of his departure from Leith 
 for London, after which he did not again see his mother. He 
 reproaches himself for having left her. That night of em- 
 barkation is now a torture to him: "may darkness dye it 
 with the deepest stains." In the tumult of his grief he 
 wishes that he had been lost at sea, and that fate had not re- 
 served him for the unruly woe he is now suffering. But he 
 conquers his depression, and sees his mother "with immortal 
 beauty glow." 'She no longer bears the "early wrinkle" 
 which was "care-contracted" in work for her children among 
 the "unnumbered ills" of poverty. 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 27 
 
 For see ! attended by the angelic throng, 
 Through yonder worlds of light she glides along. 
 
 Langhorne's much later poem On His Mother (1759) 
 shows little advance over Thomson's treatment : 
 
 Source of my life, that led my tender years, 
 
 With all a parent's pious fears, 
 That nursed my infant thought, and taught my mind to grow. 
 
 Although his recollection of childhood is more extensive 
 than Thomson's, it is not more detailed : 
 
 Careful she marked each dangerous way, 
 Where youth's unwary footsteps stray : 
 
 She taught the struggling passions to subside ; 
 Where sacred truth, and reason guide, 
 
 In virtue's glorious path to seek the realms of day. 
 
 The closer observation of Ambrose Philips, Gay, and 
 Lady Winchilsea becomes clear by comparison with Walter 
 Harte's To the Right Honourable Lady Hertford, upon the 
 birth of Lord Beauchamp (1721?). In this minor versifier 
 the fashion of avoiding details of direct observation of the 
 infant stands out baldly. The ''gentle infant" is adjured 
 to rise from his slumbers, to lift his fair head and ''unfold" 
 his "radiant eyes." While every bosom beats with height- 
 ened pleasure. 
 
 Surrounding eyes devour the beauteous boy. 
 
 x\s if this were sufficiently close approach to direct contem- 
 plation, Harte is off with the statement that the child is 
 destined to be an ornament in other courts where he will 
 "wound the hearts of beauties yet unborn." ^ After this the 
 
 ^ In Russell's sonnet (''Dear babe, whose meaning by fond looks 
 expressed"), the child is less the subject than the poet himself. When 
 he is thinking of the child, after the opening lines, he is concerned 
 about her "riper year." 
 
28 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 poet returns to the beau in embryo and invokes the "gentle 
 Nine" to descend and deck the infant with laurels and bays.^ 
 
 William Whitehead's Charge to the Poets (1762) advises 
 poets to leave traditional rhyming in which language "Des- 
 cends like similes from Bard to Bard." - Poets have too 
 long copied Greece and Rome.^ Although Whitehead's 
 birthday odes often lean heavily on Venus and the Graces, 
 his delightful poem On the Birth-day of a Young Lady 
 (Four Years Old) reveals an attempt to hold the attention 
 focused on the child. In place of insipid compliments 
 there is a simple phrasing of the joy of parents over the 
 first spoken words of their offspring. The poem has been 
 overlooked by compilers of anthologies, but deserves a 
 place in collections of childhood verse. 
 
 ^ Swift's Directions for making a birth-day song (1729) specifi- 
 cally ridicules classicalities : 
 
 To form a just and finished piece, 
 Take twenty gods of Rome or Greece, 
 Whose godship are in chief request, 
 And fit your present subject best; 
 And should it be your hero's case. 
 To have both male and female race, 
 Your business must be to provide 
 A score of goddesses beside. 
 
 - In A Love Song (in the modern taste), Swift takes a rhythmi- 
 cal fling at the vogue of Cupid : 
 
 Fluttering spread thy purple pinions, 
 Gentle Cupid ! o'er my heart ; 
 I a slave in thy dominions, 
 Nature must give way to art. 
 
 ^ Thank heaven the times are changed ; no poets now 
 Need roar for Bacchus or to Venus bow. 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 29 
 
 The rosebud opens on her cheek, 
 The meaning eyes begin to speak ; 
 And in each smiling look is seen 
 The innocence which plays within. 
 Nor is the fault'ring tongue confined 
 To lisp the dawnings of the mind, 
 But fair and full her words convey 
 The little all they have to say; 
 And each fond parent, as they fall, 
 Finds volumes in that little all. 
 
 Criticism of contemporary poetry may, also, be indicative 
 of progress. Poets themselves, after the middle of the 
 century, were ready for a change. This is clear from 
 Lloyd's The Poetry Professors, in which Lloyd is following 
 up Swift's early protests. ^ He is stirred to rebellion by 
 fulsome complimentary verse, and birthday odes are an 
 abomination. - Now that England has not lost her prayers, 
 and "A royal babe, a prince of Wales" has been born to 
 George, 
 
 Poets ! I pity all your nails — 
 
 What reams of paper will be spoiled. 
 
 What graduses be daily soiled 
 
 By inky fingers, greasy thumbs, 
 
 Hunting the word that never comes. 
 
 1 The use of children to heighten effect aroused the ire of Swift. 
 In the Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General he 
 exposes this treatment as so much sham : 
 
 Behold his funeral appears; 
 Nor widow's sighs nor orphan's tears 
 Wont at such times each heart to pierce. 
 Attend the progress of his hearse. 
 But what of that? his friends may say 
 He had those honours in his day, 
 True to his profit and his pride, 
 He made them weep before he died. 
 
 2 Compare The Fanciad, an Heroic Poem (1743) : 
 
 No hackneyed Plunger, Mine — no Birth-Day Drone. 
 
30 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 He is disgusted with the classical trumpery of verse that 
 will force pagan gods to walk again in triumph at the 
 Christian birth of the prince.^ Poets of trim academic taste 
 will 
 
 lug them in by head and shoulders, 
 To be the speakers, or beholders. 
 Mars shall present him with a lance. 
 To humble Spain and conquer France ; 
 The Graces, buxom, blithe, and gay, 
 Shall at his cradle dance the hay; 
 And Venus, with her train of loves. 
 Shall bring a thousand pair of doves 
 To bill, to coo, to whine, to squeak. 
 Through all the dialects of Greek, 2 
 
 Signs of a change in point of view are noticeable also in 
 Miss Whately's verses. She exalts simplicity and holds it 
 
 1 Compare Gratulatio solennis Universitatis O.voniensis ob 
 celcissimum Ger. Fred. Aug. Williae Principem, Ger. Ill et Char- 
 lottae Reg. auspicatissime natum. Oxonii 1762. 
 
 2 Lloyd found more congenial matter in the homes of middle- 
 class Englishmen. The most extended lively passage that throws 
 light on eighteenth-century nursery methods in London occurs in 
 Robert Lloyd's Chit-Chat. The situation is dramatically conceived 
 at the moment when Mrs. Brown and her companion are about to 
 leave on a shopping tour. Jacky insists on accompanying his 
 mother. In her attempts to reconcile Jacky to his fate, Mrs. Brown 
 runs the gamut of appeals by frightening him with the suggestion 
 of "bugaboes" and a "naughty horse" that will bite him, and the 
 mob that will tread him under foot. Jacky has by this time 
 descended from crying to whining, but his mother persists in warn- 
 ing him that he might "better blubber, than be lame." She coaxes 
 him to her with "Come, come, then, give mamma a kiss," calls Kitty 
 to take Jacky and "fetch him down the last new toy," and to make 
 him as merry as she can. — Compare also Tom Careful's son and 
 daughter in Somerville's The True Use of the Looking-Glass. 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 31 
 
 a virtue to be a stranger to birthnight balls.^ In Table 
 Talk Cowper joins the democratic chorus and pities kings 
 upon whom worship waits 
 
 Obsequious from the cradle to the throne. 
 Before whose infant eyes the flatterer bows, 
 And binds a wreath about their baby brows. 2 
 
 In Hope, his further strictures on man, who in his nurse's 
 lap seems to have all the charms of a cherub, but is in 
 reality 
 
 the genuine offspring of revolt, 
 Stubborn and sturdy, a wild ass's colt, 
 
 smack of the late-century period of the Revolution. 
 
 In his lines on the Death of an Infant, Lovibond shows a 
 desire to substitute for well-worn sentiments and theological 
 commonplaces a naturalistic conception that is new in this 
 type of poem.^ The child is blessed whom Nature's gentle 
 hand has taken 
 
 E'en in his childish days, ere yet he knew 
 Or sin, or pain, or youthful passion's force. 
 In Earth's soft lap, beneath the flowery turf, 
 His peaceful ashes sleep. 
 
 Beattie's Ode on Lord Hay's Birthday reflects senti- 
 mental humanitarianism. Beattie protests that his muse is 
 
 1 The Lady's Poetical Magazine or Beauties of British Poetry, 
 Vol. I, 1781. 
 
 2 Compare Charles Churchill's The Ghost: 
 
 Or for some infant doomed by fate 
 To wallow in a large estate, 
 With rhymes the cradle must adorn. 
 To tell the world a fool is born. 
 
 2 Gray is con^ entional in Epitaph on a Child. — Lovibond's The 
 Death of a Young Gentleman shows traces of naturalism. See also 
 Cawthorn's A Father's Extempore Consolation ("on the death of 
 two daughters, who lived only two days"). 
 
32 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 unskilled in venal praise, and unstained with ''flattery's art." 
 He emphasizes democratic virtues. As it matures, the 
 child shall 
 
 let the social instinct glow, 
 And leani to feel another's woe, 
 And in his joy be blessed. 
 
 His ancestral towers will contain no dungeon or clanking 
 chains, but instead 
 
 The open doors the needy bless, 
 
 The unfriended hail their calm recess, 
 
 And gladness smile around. 
 
 As ideals for the child, Beattie substitutes love of nature and 
 rural simplicity. As admiring multitudes trace the patri- 
 monial mien in the growing child, they will note ''the liberal 
 smile" and the warm heart. Although the child may live 
 to win a nation's love, he must not despise 
 
 The village and the grove. 
 * 
 
 For innocence with angel smile, 
 Simplicity that knows no guile, 
 And love and peace are there. 
 
 Beattie becomes so wrapped up in his vision of simple con- 
 tentment that he forgets the child in the exaltation of the 
 unselfish man, who alone is truly great. Though not dis- 
 carded, the set imagery of traditional birthday verse is 
 subordinated to the new material. 
 
 Francis Hoyland's Ode (1763?) likewise reveals the 
 older poetic method coming into contact with the sentiment 
 of the sixties. His lines still contain personification which 
 stands in the way of direct observation of the child ; but if 
 "Zephyr" and "Poverty" are there, we find side by side with 
 them unmistakable signs of personal expression. The Ode, 
 which seems to have been addressed to his child under 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 33 
 
 pathetic circumstances of poverty, had the distinction of 
 being re-issued from the Strawberry Hill press. Little is 
 known of Hoyland's life beyond the fact of his poverty. 
 It seems that he had enjoyed some favor, but that depend- 
 ence galled him. He had received a fatal boon, and he 
 wants no more of it. He prefers the honest frown, and in 
 the words of his biographer, "like the country-mouse, wishes 
 to be restored to his crust of bread and liberty." 
 
 The lines of welcome to his child, who from allusions to 
 blackbirds was born probably in late winter, are worthy 
 of high rank among poems about children. His love is 
 simply expressed. Side glances to birds and flowers relieve 
 emotional tension and enrich the theme. Although the 
 sentimental note is not absent, Hoyland shows restraint, 
 which, however, does not leave his reader cold. 
 
 And art thou come, ere Zephyr mild 
 
 Has waked the blackbird's vernal strain? 
 Alas ! thou com'st, my beauteous child, 
 
 Where Poverty her iron reign 
 Extends, more bleak and cruel far 
 Than winter or the northern star : 
 Yet cease those cries, that all my pity move; 
 Though cold the hearth, my bosom burns with love. 
 
 Although he has enriched the passage by an image from 
 nature, Lyttleton, in his lines in the Monody in memory of 
 Lady Lyttleton (1747), echoes Hill's lines on his motherless 
 little ones. 
 
 Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns, 
 Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns 
 
 By your delighted mother's side. 
 
 Who now your infant steps shall guide? 
 Ah ! where is now the hand whose tender care 
 To every virtue would have formed your youth, 
 And strewed with flowers the thorny ways of truth? 
 
34 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 John Scott, who in one year had lost not only his father, 
 but also his child and wife, has unaffectedly memorialized 
 his grief in Amwell, in Hertfordshire (1768). His wife 
 was like a lovely flower *'too fair for this rude clime" ; she 
 bore "one beauteous pledge," but 'The fatal gift forbad the 
 giver's stay" : 
 
 In one sad spot, where kindred ashes lie, 
 
 O'er wife, and child, and parents, closed the ground. 
 
 During the last quarter of the century the two most 
 widely read poems of this class were Shaw's MonOdy to the 
 memory of Emma (1768) and Address to a Nightingale 
 (1771). The secret of their popularity lies in a sentimental 
 abandon to frank revelation of personal grief and sorrow. 
 Cuthbert Shaw, the improvident and temperamental son of a 
 shoemaker, was at one time and another a tutor in litera- 
 ture to Chesterfield, an usher in a school at Darlington, 
 hack writer for London newspapers, and an actor first in a 
 traveling company and then at the Haymarket. He mar- 
 ried above him in social rank, his wife renouncing friends 
 and family for him. The seven poems addressed to her 
 reveal Shaw's love and attachment. After the death of 
 Emma upon the birth of her first child, he wrote the Monody, 
 which poignantly expresses his grief. He will discard "pa- 
 geantry of phrase" : "111 suit the flowers of speech with woes 
 like mine." He asks friends to forbear telling him of her 
 matchless virtues, which he knows too well. He hopes that 
 the gush of tears from his welling heart may discharge his 
 load of grief. Shaw wrote in the moments when he felt 
 his loss most keenly. He sings her virtues in tearful lines 
 that, of course, made a surer appeal during the sentimental 
 sixties and after, than now when the reader prefers the 
 poet's overflow of emotion recollected in tranquillity. A 
 generation, however, that wept over Clarissa and Julia was 
 
 I 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 35 
 
 certain to be profoundly stirred by the dying Emma's appeal 
 for the welfare of her child in the vision of a possible second 
 wife's cruelty. Her homely appeal, "My dearest Shaw, 
 forgive a woman's fears," is made dramatically effective by 
 broken lines and pauses which reflect her tense emotion 
 when she implores him to take her infant daughter to some 
 remote spot where she may enjoy his parental love undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 The closing stanzas addressed to the infant left to share 
 his woes, reflect the trembling sensibility characteristic of 
 the poem. Shaw looks into the future. When the child is 
 twining round his knees, his eyes will often fill with tears as 
 he traces the mother's smiles and thinks of how the child 
 was "Bought with a life yet dearer than thy own." Then 
 he touches upon the motherless child motive : 
 
 Who now shall seek with fond delight 
 Thy infant steps to guide aright? 
 
 The sentimental father is not satisfied to close his grief here, 
 but must press on to the days when he will be ill and helpless. 
 
 Say, wilt thou drop the tender tear, 
 Whilst on the mournful theme I dwell? 
 Then, fondly stealing to thy father's side, 
 
 Whene'er thou seest the soft distress, 
 Which I would vainly seek to hide. 
 
 Say, wilt thou strive to make it less ? 
 To soothe my sorrows, all thy cares employ, 
 And in my cup of grief infuse one drop of joy? 
 
 This is, indeed, the very luxury of grief. The playgoers 
 who had been surprised into sentimental tears in 1696 had 
 long passed away. But another generation that wept over 
 sentimental plays and novels welcomed such a poem as 
 Shaw's because the poet was writing in the mood which 
 was popular in drama and fiction. 
 
36 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Shaw ag-ain levies the "tribute of a tear" in the ''sorrow- 
 soothing strains" of the Address to a Nightingale, which 
 three years later memorializes the death of Emma's child. 
 The muse shall complain in piteous accents ''And dwell with 
 fond delay on blessings past." Imagery drawn from bird 
 life accentuates the fast-growing popularity of new subject- 
 matter which was finally to crowd out altogether the tra- 
 ditional set imagery. Shaw feels that the piteous notes 
 which sadden all the groves must be prompted by a loss 
 akin to his. Does the bird mourn a lost mate, or is she 
 bereft of her darling young? The poet weeps for both. He 
 has lost a bride in her youthful charms, but also "A lovely 
 babe that should have lived to bless" his declining years. 
 The child languished for a mother's aid, and winged its 
 flight to seek her parent in the skies. No one is left to 
 "soothe the anguish of an aching heart." Strangers who 
 are far removed from his affections must fulfill the last sad 
 office. Yet as long as he has life he will dwell fondly on 
 "blessings past." 
 
 Although his sentimentalism is literary, Shaw can not be 
 accused of the insincerity of Sterne. Shaw differs from 
 Sterne in that his poems are motivated by personal grief. 
 No matter how the modern reader may react to his literary 
 method, two historical facts stand out; that his grief em- 
 phasized the personal point of view toward childhood, and 
 that the deep impression he made upon his and the following 
 generation prepared the way for a more sympathetic ap- 
 proach to childhood by accentuating emotional treatment. 
 
 During this period the boundaries of poetry were in fact 
 extended to include a minuter and more specific interest in 
 infants and nursery affairs. Poetry had lagged behind prose 
 in notice of the mother's duties toward her child in such 
 matters as nursing, diet, clothes, regulation of sleep. In 
 
 I 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 37 
 
 view of contemporary interest in the interminable poems on 
 apple growing, raising the sugar cane, tilling the fields, and 
 caring for sheep, one feels justified in the expectation of 
 coming upon a poem dealing with the nurture of infants. 
 Armstrong had in fact written a poem on health, in which, 
 however, he had taken no notice of the needs of children. 
 The general neglect is all the more surprising in view of 
 the broad foundation Locke had laid in Thoughts, in which 
 he discussed the minutest details of exercise, care and 
 covering of the feet, clothes, diet, bedding, and sleep. Locke 
 was widely read throughout the century, and Richardson 
 must have had his Locke open before him while writing 
 Pamela (1740). Richardson has Pamela discuss the duties 
 of a mother to nurse her child. Publishers' announce- 
 ments from 1728 to 1 79 1 indicate that books on child nur- 
 ture were in demand.^ 
 
 Before Jerningham's // Latfc (1767), which treats at 
 length of the mother's obligation to nurse her child, poets 
 had not awakened to the needs of infants. - Jerningham is 
 forward-looking in sentiment, although he employs the set 
 imagery of earlier poetry. -Amid allusions to Lucina's 
 friendly aid, and fluttering Loves and Cupids, he couches 
 an appeal for a consideration of the natural rights of the 
 infant who "with artless eloquence" asks "The boon of 
 
 1 The ever-widening interest in children finally prompted Hugh 
 Downman, M. D., to write a poem called Infancy, which was pub- 
 lished in two parts in 1774 and 1775. It is uninspired, and gives 
 practical directions for the care of young children, in diction that 
 is anything but poetic. Ahhough the very favorable notices in the 
 Monthly Review hail the author as a benefactor of childhood, the 
 editor observes that "there are no vulgar mothers or vulgar nurses 
 who can decipher the recipe for making what, we think, they call 
 pap." Specimens are quoted in Monthly Review,, Vol. LIII. p. 200. 
 
 2 Compare, however, J. Warton's Fashion. 
 
38 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Nature, but asserts in vain." The mother's task is resigned 
 to strangers ''while Nature starts, and Hymen sheds a 
 tear." While the mother seeks fantastic pleasure, the nurs- 
 ling lifts his voice, "his tears unnoticed, and unsoothed his 
 pain." Like Beattie, Jerningham advocates the return to 
 nature in the interest of the welfare of infants. Of what 
 avail are "the splendid nursery, and the attendant train?" 
 It would have been better had the infant first seen light in 
 an obscure cottage, where he would have reposed securely 
 in the "cradling arm" of a cottage mother. 
 
 Say why, illustrious daughters of the great, 
 Lives not the nursling at your tender breast? 
 
 Although the problems surrounding childbirth were dis- 
 cussed in magazines, earlier poets of the century seem to 
 have been content with references to Lucina's squalling hour 
 or with colorless details in remote connections such as the 
 birth of Apollo or Time.^ There seems to have been slight 
 inclination even throughout the middle decades of the cen- 
 tury to approach the subject more closely than Langhorne, 
 who calls upon man to contemplate his birth and "mortify 
 his pride" ; or he writes of man as "helpless born," one 
 whom the "brute sagacious" might scornfully behold. ^ In 
 the eighties, however, Mr. Ekins unaffectedly approaches 
 
 1 Planetary influence, although it persists as a curious survival 
 of traditional lore, is not vitally associated with childhood. Sir 
 Walter Scott's radical change of plan in Guy Mannering; or The 
 Astrologer indicates his belief that astrology was no longer familiar 
 to readers. Yet Wordsworth wrote of fanes in which the moon 
 was once worshipped by matrons who 
 
 yielding to rude faith 
 In mysteries of birth and life and death 
 And painful struggle and deliverance — prayed 
 Of thee to visit them with lenient aid. 
 
 2 Compare also Mason's The Dean and the Squire. 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 39 
 
 the subject in a poem On the Birth of a First Child (1783). 
 Preoccupied as he is chiefly with the novel joys and duties 
 of parenthood, he does not fail to notice details in the cir- 
 cumstances of motherhood that must precede a joy like his.^ 
 Thomson had long before the sixties brought poverty 
 and sentiment together, and indeed had focused them on 
 childhood. Men like Hoyland and Shaw had tapped the 
 reservoir of personal emotion in the development of themes 
 from childhood. It remained for Burns to open the flood- 
 gates, twenty years after Hoyland's Ode, in A Poet's Wel- 
 come to his Love-he gotten Daughter (1784), with the sub- 
 title "The first instance that entitled him to the venerable 
 appellation of father." Hoyland and Shaw had already 
 broken with classicist restraint that frowned upon the dis- 
 play of personal emotion as evidence of singularity, but 
 Burns is a son of the Revolution in the rebellious bravado 
 with which he faces an unfriendly world. Although he 
 feels the irregularity of the child's birth, he is not disturbed 
 by it. He will be a loving father "and brag the name o't." 
 He will love her as the "Wee image o' my bonnie Betty." He 
 gives her a fatherly kiss and sets her near his heart. Though 
 she came unsought for, and the gossips will "tease" his 
 name "in kintry clatter," she shall be "bienly clad" and well 
 educated. He will not blush when she calls him "Tyta or 
 daddie." His wishes are that she may inherit her "mither's 
 person, grace, and merit" and her own worthless daddy's 
 spirit, "without his failins." Johnson had given good 
 classicist counsel in his dictum that "very few can boast of 
 hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of 
 which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a 
 
 ' Compare Epitaph on Lady Lucy Meyrick who died in child- 
 birth, by Dr. Peter Templeman. — In A Classical Arrangement of Fu- 
 gitive Poetry, vol. XV (1797), On the Birth of a First Child is at- 
 tributed to the Rev. Dr. Jeffry ("Late Dean of Carlisle") . 
 
40 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 distinct and continued view; and, certainly, what we hide 
 from ourselves we do not show to our friends." Burns, 
 however, shows the triumph of a different philosophy, and 
 the complete emergence of romantic individuality. 
 
 Before Burns the theme of the expectant mother is no- 
 ticed in vague platitudes. ^ Burns's treatment of the theme 
 in two ballads that are associated with Jean Armour is symp- 
 tomatic of the frank realism of the naturalistic school. In 
 the home of the miller of Tarbolton, where Burns had found 
 shelter for her after she had been disowned by friends and 
 family, she recounts her loneliness, but is cheered by his 
 gifts. ^ Winter will soon pass away, and Spring will bright- 
 en the birchwood. Then her ''young baby will be born," and 
 "he'll be hame that's far awa." The Rantin Dog, the Dad- 
 die O't (1786) is a study of the lonely mother's fluctuations 
 of emotion as she thinks ahead to her humiliating situation 
 in the penance stool. Other fears press upon her. Will 
 he help her name the child; will he show affection in her 
 hour of trial; but above all, "wha my babie-clouts will 
 buy?"^ 
 
 In Burns the free play of personality almost wholly 
 crowds out set imagery, which gives place to spontaneous 
 treatment of childhood in his delightful complimentary 
 poems A Rose-Bud By My Early Walk and To Miss Cruick- 
 shank, as well as in the humanitarian On the Birth of a 
 Posthumous Child. These poems are far removed from 
 
 1 Compare Beattie's The Minstrel, I, stanza 15 (at Edwin's 
 birth), 
 
 The gossip's prayer for wealth, and wit, and worth. 
 
 2 The Bonie Lad That's Far Azva. 
 
 3 For a discussion of the unmarried mother, see The Unmarried 
 Mother in German Literature, by Oscar H. Werner (Columbia Uni- 
 versity Press). 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 41 
 
 the art of Prior in that they are written in the mood of a poet 
 who knows nature intimately in country lanes and by-ways. 
 Burns has substituted flowers and animals for classical 
 mythology and conventions of polite London society. The 
 child is made attractive through association with fresh im- 
 agery drawn from nature. 
 
 While suffering from a cold that confined him for some 
 days to the house of Mr. William Cruickshank, a teacher in 
 the high school at Edinburgh, Burns composed songs which 
 Janet Cruickshank, his ''sweet little Rose-bud," helped him 
 set to music on her harpsichord. Two complimentary 
 poems are the result of his sojourn in the Cruickshank 
 household. In A Rose-Biid By My Early Walk (1787) the 
 poet is definitely out of doors. He feels the freshness and 
 glow of life in the fields as he breathes in the rich perfume 
 of the rose, and observes 
 
 Within the bush her covered nest, 
 A little linnet fondly pressed, 
 
 who will soon hear her brood among the ''green leaves 
 bedewed" waken the early morning with their song. 
 
 So thou, dear bird, young Jeany fair. 
 On trembling string or vocal air, 
 Shall sweetly pay the tender care 
 
 That tents thy early morning. 
 
 So thou, sweet Rose-bud, young and gay, 
 Shalt beauteous blaze upon the day. 
 And bless the parent's evening ray 
 
 That watched thy early morning. 
 
 Like Prior, Burns is writing in a complimentary vein, but 
 for the graces of a highly organized society Bums has em- 
 ployed natural beauty, and has addressed the child in terms 
 of birds and flowers. 
 
42 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The identification of maiden and flower is complete in 
 To Miss Cruickshank (1787). In spite of the phrases 
 ''Boreas' hoary path" and ''Eurus' poisonous breath," which 
 show a backward look to classicist material, the spontaneous 
 nature imagery, which recognizes no cleavage between 
 flower and child, places this effusion by the side of its com- 
 panion poem as a charming manifestation of the new atti- 
 tude in occasional verse on children. 
 
 On the Birth of a Posthumous Child (1790) retains the 
 structural elements of early eighteenth-century occasional 
 verse, but at the same time weaves in beautiful nature 
 imagery with a dignity and appropriateness worthy of the 
 poet's prayer for the welfare of the helpless orphan. Burns 
 speaks with simple sincerity. 
 
 May he who gives the rain to pour, 
 
 And wings the blast to blaw, 
 Protect thee frae the driving show'r, 
 
 The bitter frost and snaw. 
 * 
 
 Blest be thy bloom, thou lovely gem. 
 
 Unscathed by ruffian hand. 
 And from thee many a parent stem 
 
 Arise to deck our land. 
 
 The charm of these poems, then, lies not in the increased 
 willingness or power to observe the child as an individual, 
 but in the substitution of nature imagery and humanitarian 
 sentiment for classicist material. 
 
 There is also a vast difference of method between the 
 early poetic use of set imagery and the free naturalistic ob- 
 servation of Blake. Watts's A Cradle Hymn (17 19) char- 
 acteristically treats the child as a kind of lay figure or 
 bit of stage property. In Watts's lullaby, the mother's ab- 
 sorption in her narrative causes her to sing so vehemently 
 that she awakens her child. She shows no inclination to 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 43 
 
 observe the child itself. Blake's A Cradle Song, on the 
 other hand, depicts a mother who is sensitive to impressions 
 of her sleeping infant. The reader is made to feel that she 
 is watching over a living, breathing creature, and she draws 
 spiritual suggestions from her baby's body. (She lovingly 
 traces soft desires and pretty infant wiles in her baby's face. 
 
 As thy softest limbs I feel, 
 Smiles as of the morning steal 
 O'er thy cheek and o'er thy breast 
 Where thy little heart does rest. ^ 
 
 On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk 
 has been called the ''most resplendent gem in Cowper's 
 casket." The poem embodies that finality in sentiment and 
 form which is essential to the creation of a classic. Cow- 
 per's poem, like those of preceding poets on the mother 
 motive, is the expression of loving duty toward a parent 
 whose memory he cherishes. Like them he contemplates 
 her happy state in Heaven ; but he enjoys the advantage of 
 not being overwhelmed by an immediate sense of grief. Not 
 the death of his mother, but her picture inspires him, so 
 that he need not attempt to express an overflow of emotion, 
 but may write with serenity. In the warm glow of recol- 
 lection he awakens tender memories of his earliest childhood 
 days. Through contemplation of his mother's picture, he 
 has lived his childhood over again and has ''renewed the 
 joys that once were mine." jHis recollections of childhood 
 companionship with his mother are suffused with tender re- 
 gret. 
 
 Unlike Thomson and Langhorne, Cowper analyzes his 
 childish thoughts and emotions. His imagery of childhood, 
 conceived with the concreteness of Wordsworth, and ex- 
 
 1 In Poems from the Rossetti Manuscript. 
 
44 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 pressed with equal simplicity, carries the reader back to 
 the poet's earliest years at the knees of his mother, or to 
 
 Where the gardener Robin, day by day, 
 Drew me to school along the public way, 
 Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapped 
 In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped. 
 
 Or he gives intimate glimpses of life in the household : 
 
 Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, 
 
 That thou mightest know me safe and warmly laid; 
 
 Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, 
 
 The biscuits, or confectionary plum; 
 
 The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed 
 
 By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glowed. 
 
 No details are too lowly to be recalled with afifection. The 
 sentiment is throughout reduced to its true simplicity ; there 
 is no tendency toward rhetoric. The poem is written with 
 a colloquial ease that never, even in an informal phrase like 
 "mimic show of thee," disturbs the fine sincerity of the 
 lines. The intimate details indicate how far poetry had 
 developed, since the days of Prior and Pope, in the direction 
 of easy personal revelation. 
 
 Wordsworth has several times by extended interpreta- 
 tion of details noticed the infant in the hour of its birth. ^ 
 For the master poet of our study no phase of childhood is 
 unworthy of exalted poetic interpretation. He looks upon 
 natural joy over the birth of a child as a fit subject for 
 poetic treatment, his imagery being in harmony with his 
 
 temperamental high seriousness. In To (upon the 
 
 birth of her first-horn child, March, i8^^), Wordsworth's 
 treatment follows much the same general outline as the 
 poem of Ekins, but he has enriched it with imagery and 
 suggestions of spiritual insight. A beautiful calm per- 
 
 1 See Michael and The Thorn. 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 45 
 
 vades the lines, which join with the facts of direct observa- 
 tion a high philosophy of spiritual contentment and thanks- 
 giving. 
 
 He considers the plight of the helpless babe who, 
 'Tlung by labouring nature forth," lies in ''tenderest naked- 
 ness." From the ''penalty" of the mother's throes that are 
 now ended, there springs "more than mortal recompense" 
 in the ''blissful calm" 
 
 Known but to this one release. 
 
 The mother's silent thanks, that rise "incense-like" to 
 Heaven, mingle also 
 
 With the gush of earthly love, 
 As a debt to that frail Creature, 
 Instrument of struggling Nature. 
 
 The troubles and pains of life which the child will experience 
 are 
 
 Presignified by that dread strife 
 
 Whence ye have escaped together. 
 
 But if the child follows the steps of her mother 
 
 She may look for serene weather; 
 In all her trials sure to find 
 Comfort for a faithful mind; 
 Kindlier issues, holier rest, 
 Than even now await her prest, 
 Conscious Nursling, to thy breast. 
 
 In addition to his deep spiritual insight, Wordsworth 
 often displays a matter-of-fact, almost scientific, faithfulness 
 of observation. Luke slept for two days after his birth, 
 "as oft befalls to new born infants." But as the poet con- 
 templates his favorite daughter Dora at the age of one 
 month, while she sleeps in "heedless peace," he is not dis- 
 turbed by scientific doubts as to automatic muscular contrac- 
 tions. He notes that 
 
46 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Smiles are beginning, like the beams of dawn 
 
 To shoot and circulate, . . . 
 
 Tranquil assurance that Heaven supports 
 
 The feeble motions of thy life, and cheers 
 
 Thy loneliness : or shall those smiles be called 
 
 Feelers of love, put forth as if to explore 
 
 This untried world? 
 
 In the true mood of naturalism his thoughts turn to her 
 probable state had she been 
 
 of Indian birth 
 Couched on a casual bed of moss and leaves, 
 And rudely canopied by leafy boughs, 
 Or to the churlish elements exposed 
 On the bleak plains. 
 
 The closing stanzas of Dorothy's The Mother s Return 
 (1807) reveal a sympathetic insight into the sudden changes 
 and fleeting moods of early childhood. After hours of 
 vigorous play there is a "momentary heaviness" of heart 
 when the evening star calls to rest, but they run upstairs 
 in "merry fit" and "gamesome race." 
 
 Five minutes past — and, O the change ! 
 Asleep upon their beds they lie; 
 Their busy limbs in perfect rest, 
 And closed the sparkling eye. 
 
 Dorothy's Holiday at Gzverndivifnant, May, 1826, likewise 
 shows her faithful observation of the almost instantaneous 
 alertness of children upon awaking in the morning. After 
 evening prayer 
 
 Theirs is one long, one steady sleep, 
 
 Till the sun, tip-toe on the steep 
 
 In front of our beloved cot, 
 
 Casts on the walls her brightest beams. 
 
 Within, a startling lustre streams. 
 
 They all awaken suddenly; 
 
 As at the touch of magic skill. . . . 
 
 I 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 47 
 
 In The Excursion (V) Wordsworth is subtle in his obser- 
 vation of the infant who, as he slowly awakens, stretches his 
 limbs, 
 
 bemocking as might seem, 
 The outward functions of intelligent man. 
 
 _ Wordsworth's To H. C. (Six Years Old) (1802) illus- 
 trates the change of poetic treatment that came with a fuller 
 acceptance of the theory of natural rights and rights of the 
 individual. Prior and Ambrose Philips looked upon chil- 
 dren in the light of the doctrine of conformity. They 
 thought of the child in terms of the belle, and Thomas 
 Warton conceived the young prince in terms of the states- 
 man.^ In doing this they observed the fruition of the nor- 
 mal development the child was expected to follow. The 
 civilization under whose protection they lived, depended for 
 its existence on conformity by mutual consent. The career 
 of the children who were subjects of their verse was pre- 
 determined by circumstances that had become fixed, and it 
 was the natural expectation that children would fit into the 
 groove into which they had been born.^ 
 
 The romanticists, however, in so far as they were sons 
 of the Revolution, and had felt the forces working for 
 democracy, did not recognize the binding power of human 
 institutions. They brushed aside the ideal of conformity 
 and gave free play to individuality. Tt follows that Words- 
 
 1 On the Birth of the Prince of Wales (1762). 
 
 2 On the Prince of Wales's Birth 1762 by William Henley Esq. : 
 
 Sleep, royal infant, sleep; 
 Round thee may guardian powers their vigils keep. 
 How little dost thou know, 
 Whilst leaning on thy nurse's breast, 
 Or in thy mother's arms carest, 
 The high important toils 'tis thine to undergo! 
 
48 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 worth can not forecast the future of the child with the same 
 certainty as the earHer poets; the individual is inexplicable 
 because the springs of life are obscure and because man, a 
 law unto himself, is forever different from his fellows. 
 Whatever the merits of such an attitude, for the child in 
 poetry it had a two- fold advantage ; first, that the poet looked 
 upon the child as an individual worthy of profound attention 
 and study; and secondly, it followed from this, that any 
 manifestation of his individuality in mood or action was a 
 fit subject for poetry. 
 
 Because he is interested in the child for what he is now — 
 a fresh natural being — rather than for what he may become 
 through training (compare Emile), Wordsworth in the pres- 
 ence of Hartley Coleridge is preoccupied with the problem 
 of catching the secret of his individuality. But the fleetmg 
 moods of this faery voyager among men baffled direct 
 analysis. Wordsworth therefore applies transcendental 
 philosophy clothed in vague, skyey imagery. The child's 
 fancies are brought from afar ; he makes a mockery of words 
 and fits to unutterable thoughts 'The breeze-like motions 
 and the self-born carol." He is a faery voyager whose boat 
 seems less to float on earthly streams than to brood on air. 
 The child's thought life is so ethereal that he lives as though 
 
 Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, 
 
 Where earth and heaven do make one imagery. 
 
 Though the poet is sufficiently practical to fear for the fu- 
 ture of such a child, he is attracted by the very excess of 
 individuality which arouses his fears : 
 
 O blessed vision ! happy child ! 
 Thou art so exquisitely wild. 
 
 Hartley is so delicately constituted as to be unfitted for the 
 unkind shocks and soiling tasks of life. He is "a dew-drop, 
 which the morn brings forth," that ''glitters while it lives," 
 
IN OUR INFANCY 49 
 
 But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife 
 Slips in a moment out of life. 
 
 As the poet looks into the future, he feels that nature will 
 be good to the child by taking him off before worldly mat- 
 ters bring grief and melancholy that he can not endure ; or 
 nature will keep him a child always and preserve him 
 
 by individual right, 
 A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. 
 
 Thought and imagery are here in sharp contrast to the 
 clearly defined outHnes of Prior. Though Wordsworth's 
 analysis is evanescent in effect, and though he at times seems 
 to destroy physical reality in atteinpting to interpret the 
 child's personality, we know from Coleridge's account that 
 Hartley was an unusual if not abnormal child. Wordsworth 
 was not fantastic, but had his eye on the child. This is 
 evident from Coleridge's own remarks : 
 
 Hartley is a spirit that dances on an aspen leaf; the air that 
 yonder sallow-faced and yawning tourist is breathing, is to my babe 
 a perpetual nitrous oxide. Never was more joyous creature born. 
 Pain with him is so wholly trans-substantiated by the joys that had 
 rolled on before, and rushed on after, that oftentimes five minutes 
 after his mother has whipt him he has gone up and asked her to 
 whip him again. 
 
 Wordsworth was fascinated by the unusual personality 
 revealed in this child, and in so far as it was possible with 
 the poetic treatment congenial to him, he has given a true 
 interpretation of Hartley Coleridge at the age of six. He 
 took no external standards for granted, but looked upon the 
 child as an individual worthy of individual treatment on 
 the basis of laws of conduct revealed in the child itself. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GROWING BOY 
 
 In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse 
 
 Upon the days gone by; to act in thought 
 
 Past seasons o'er, and be again a child ; 
 
 To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope 
 
 Down which the child would roll; to pluck gay flowers, 
 
 Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand 
 
 (Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled) 
 
 Would throw away, and straight take up again, 
 
 Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn 
 
 Bound with so playful and so light a foot. 
 
 That the pressed daisy scarce declined her head. 
 
 Childhood: Charles Lamb. 
 
 Children who appear in lines on play are usually beyond 
 the nursery age; they are old enough to be out of doors, 
 and to enjoy more vigorous pastimes. In Going into 
 Breeches, Charles Lamb has caught the boisterous spirit and 
 greater freedom which mark the transition from indoor 
 games to outdoor play. 
 
 Puss in Corners, Hide and Seek, 
 
 Sports for girls and punies weak. 
 
 Baste the bear he now may play at, 
 
 Leap-frog, Foot-ball, sport away at, 
 
 Show his skill and strength at Cricket, 
 
 Mark his distance, pitch his wicket. 
 
 Run about in winter's snow 
 
 Till his cheeks and fingers glow, 
 
 Climb a tree or scale a wall 
 
 Without any fear to fall. 
 
 The early poets, however, in their passing notice of chil- 
 dren, did not phrase an equally lively appreciation of the ac- 
 
THE GROWING BOY 51 
 
 tivities of the growing boy. In classicist poetry the earliest 
 reference to children in the fields associates them with 
 flowers ; but had John Philipps in Cyder shown a vital sym- 
 pathy with children at play, the phrasing of such an interest 
 would have been exceptional. The early poets, in the main 
 town poets, were committed to a consideration of manners 
 at the center of fashion. With few exceptions, evidence 
 of interest in outdoor play appears incidentally. Often the 
 general subject is close to childhood, as in Shenstone's 
 Schoolmistress or Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of 
 Eton College, The poet occasionally focused his attention 
 on outdoor play in such poems as Hoyland's Guardian 
 Angel, Bruce's Lochleven, Scott's Childhood, Lovibond's 
 Combe Neville, and White's Childhood. Incidental notice 
 ordinarily implies a generalized conception ; but when the 
 personal element emerges, after the middle of the century, it 
 is usually accompanied by specific details that localize and 
 individualize the experience. 
 
 The change from Thomson's impersonal attitude to 
 Wordsworth's extended autobiographical recollection is 
 gradual. The personal element is dependent for effective 
 realization upon the poet's willingness to phrase specific 
 details. The difference between this and generalized de- 
 scription will be noted in connection with play in fields and 
 by the side of streams. The full emergence of the personal 
 element, which came with the growth of sentiment, will 
 be observed in connection with the play of schoolboys and 
 the poet's fond recollection of native fields. 
 
 From the days of Thomson, children are increasingly ob- 
 served in fields and woods. Their roving habits often car- 
 ried them away from the home plot and village green. To 
 
52 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 be under the eye of parents, they were frequently taken into 
 the harvest field to help in gleaning. |Children assisting at 
 harvest were portrayed at first as miniature harvesters — 
 little workers thought of in terms of their elders. As soon 
 as poets became more familiar with the details of external 
 nature, and as their growing sympathy with childhood 
 awakened them to a realization that children are individuals, 
 poetry reflected those details which differentiate boys and 
 girls from their elders. Children are no longer merely at 
 work, but are tempted in child fashion by berries at the 
 roadside or near the hedge. 
 
 In a typically conceived description of hay-making In 
 Summer, Thomson notes how 
 
 Infant bands 
 Trail the long rake, or, with the fragrant load 
 O'ercharged, amid the kind oppression roll. 
 
 Activity in which children must certainly have taken part 
 is suggested without specifically connecting with them the 
 ''blended voice" that was ''heard from dale to dale." In 
 Amzvell, Scott is equally general in his lines on the annual 
 recurrence of 
 
 The shouts of harvest, and the prattling train 
 Of cheerful gleaners. 
 
 Little advance is shown by Wordsworth in a late sonnet 
 ("Intent on gathering wool from hedge and brake") in 
 which he notices unaccompanied children. They work glee- 
 fully in expectation that a "poor old Dame" will bless them 
 for their gift. Closer observation is revealed in the early 
 sonnet "Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane" (1792, 
 or earlier), in which childhood traits are sympathetically 
 noticed. The children accompanied their elders, who were 
 gleaning tufts of hay caught by a hawthorn hedge from the 
 
THE GROWING BOY 53 
 
 loaded wagon as it passed down the lane. While seeming 
 to be even busier than their elders in plying the ''little rake," 
 they at the same time "with cunning sidelong look" saun- 
 tered to ''pluck the strawberries wild unseen." Words- 
 worth has more than once associated children with straw- 
 berries. In another passage, in Epistle to Beaumont (1811), 
 he notes that the strawberries he enjoyed at an early-morn- 
 ing breakfast in the lowly grange in Yewdale had been 
 gathered from lane and woodside. Poured in hillocks, they 
 were the "offering wild of children's industry." 
 
 The story of children in field and wood is not complete 
 without mention of berrypicking and nutting expeditions. 
 These are part of the unpublished seasonal schedule of 
 childhood pastimes. As was to be expected, earlier poets 
 are concerned with practical considerations. ^ Poems on 
 subjects of husbandry, like The Hop-Garden, The Fleece, 
 or The Sugarcane, reveal a matter-of-fact attitude that is 
 very different from the personal point of view of more in- 
 spired moralists like Cowper and Wordsworth. When, in 
 Agriculture, Dodsley notices the problem of children wand- 
 ering in the fields, he is preoccupied with the dangers that 
 beset the hungry child who is tempted to taste of the "allur- 
 ing fruit" of the deadly nightshade. As a matter of fact, 
 the poet is reading a lecture to farmers on the dangers of 
 ill-weeded and unkept fields. He does not spare realistic 
 details of the various steps that lead up to the hideous death 
 of the child who has unwarily eaten poisonous berries. The 
 
 1 This attitude persists in later poetry. In The Oak and the 
 Broom (1800), as Wordsworth contemplates the broom precariously 
 growing in a fissure of rock, he fears for the little witless shepherd 
 boy who may be tempted some sultry noon to slumber in the branches 
 of this lightly-rooted tree. Cowper has the "little ones" from the 
 village gather kingcups and daisies, but also a cheap and wholesome 
 salad from the brook (The Task, VI). 
 
54 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 passage closes with an apostrophe to Providence, which 
 has concealed poison in a form so tempting. Dodsley can 
 not understand why this bane should be allowed to grow 
 "so near the path of innocents." Numerous passages show 
 that nightshade seems to have been especially feared. Scott 
 in Rural Scenery calls upon shepherds to warn children (who 
 roam ''beside the public way") against the pernicious plants 
 that spring from rank soils, and especially against the dead- 
 ly juice with which the "nightshade's berry swells." In 
 Rural Business he is less sombre when giving harvest counsel 
 which is timed by reference to the season when bramble 
 berries change from red to black, 
 
 And boys for nuts the hazel copses range. 
 
 In his lines To Contemplation, White shows an attempt 
 to individualize. He loves to listen to 
 
 the little peasant's song, 
 Wandering lone the glens among, 
 His artless lip with berries dyed, 
 And feet through ragged shoes descried. 
 
 At an earlier date, the personal element appears in 
 Hoyland's lines to his guardian angel ("Sweet angel of my 
 natal hour"), one of the tenderest poems of the century. 
 He recalls how he was led by "simple Nature" and was 
 guarded from harm : 
 
 'Twas thou, whene'er I ranged the mead, 
 That drew me from the pois'nous weed 
 
 Of tempting purple dye; 
 That drew me from the fatal brake. 
 Where, coiled in speckled pride, the snake 
 
 Allured my longing eye.^ 
 
 1 Thomas Day's Sandford and Mertoim contains a snake episode 
 very much like that developed in Mary Lamb's unconvincing The 
 Boy and the Snake (in which little Henry shares his breakfast with 
 a snake which he calls familiarly "Grey Pate.") 
 
THE GROWING BOY 55 
 
 The personal note is clearly heard also In one of Cow- 
 per's finest autobiographical passages in The Task : 
 
 E'er since, a truant boy, I passed my bounds, 
 To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames; 
 And still remember, nor without regret, 
 Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared, 
 How oft, my slice of pocket-store consumed. 
 Still hungering, pennyless, and far from home, 
 I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws. 
 Or blushing crabs, or berries that emboss 
 The bramble, black as jet, or sloes austere. 
 Hard fare ! but such as boyish appetite 
 Disdains not, nor the palate, undepraved 
 By culinary art, unsavoury deems. 
 
 In the autobiographical poem {Nutting, 1799) which re- 
 cords a destructive visit to hazel coppices near Lake Esth- 
 waite, Wordsworth recalls one day singled out from many, 
 "One of those heavenly days that cannot die." He pictures 
 the boy with "huge wallet" slung over his shoulders, a 
 nutting crook in hand, and dressed in ragged clothes saved 
 by frugal Dame Tyson against the time when he would en- 
 counter thorns and brambles. In lines which vigorously 
 respond to his recollection of having "dragged to earth both 
 branch and bough" he bears witness to that rough and 
 unfeeling nature which is traditionally associated with boys 
 of a certain age. 
 
 The same change from early-century incidental and gen- 
 eralized notice to late-century personal recollection or in- 
 dividualization may be observed in other phases of the 
 growing boy's outdoor activities. In Summer, Thomson's 
 passage on sheep shearing merely notices 
 
 The clamour much of men, and boys, and dogs, 
 
56 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 and glances aside to the sturdy boy "glorying in his might" 
 as he holds the indignant ram by its ''twisted horns." In 
 his Sugarcane Grainger flattens out this incident by refer- 
 ence to the ''infant throng" who "proud of their prowess" 
 attempt to hold the "struggling ram." In his Fleece, Dyer 
 fails to visualize children who were present at the sheep- 
 shearing festival of sprinkling the rivers with flowers, in 
 fact does not bring them into his picture beyond noting 
 that "their little ones look on delighted." Sentiment colors 
 Scott's treatment. The beauty of the flowers which his 
 swain plucks for Delia is enhanced because he gathers them 
 during the evening hours when village children stray in the 
 green meadows. More romantic also is Cowper's ideal of 
 freedom (Retirement) , which finds perfect expression in the 
 shepherd boy who unfolds his flock at the first breeze of 
 dawn when glittering dew-drops are on the thorn. The 
 boy unconsciously enjoys the essence of freedom while he 
 sits under bank or bush, linking cherry stones or plaiting 
 rushes. Do not ask him how fair freedom is — he has 
 never known another state. In carefree mood he carves 
 his "rustic name" upon a tree. 
 
 Wordsworth's shepherd boys are vitally conceived. 
 They are less placid than earlier poetic children, and also 
 more mischievous. In Luke, who caught at the legs of 
 sheep, and "with shouts scared them" while they were un- 
 der the shears, or who stood at the gate in the fields "some- 
 thing between a hindrance and a help," may be observed a 
 child who is far removed from the theoretical children of 
 the earlier poets. In The Idle Shepherd-Boys; or, Dun- 
 geon-Ghyll Force, a Pastoral (1800), Wordsworth gives 
 lively glimpses of the changing moods of careless boys who 
 neglect duty for play. They are sitting beneath a rock. 
 
THE GROWING BOY 57 
 
 Their work, if any work they have, 
 Is out of mind — ^or done. 
 
 On whistles fashioned from branches of a sycamore tree 
 they are playing snatches from a Christmas hymn. As 
 a livelier mood overtakes them they run a race for one of 
 the whistles as a prize. In the midst of the race one dares 
 the other to follow him on a natural bridge of rock over 
 the chasm made by the waterfall. The challenger, "all eyes 
 and feet," with staff in hand as a balance, is half way across 
 when he hears the bleat of a lamb that had washed over the 
 waterfall into the pool beneath. At this moment the poet 
 appears and assists them in extricating the swirling lamb, 
 but not without gentle admonishment to "better mind their 
 trade." 
 
 Children at play by river and stream have been noticed 
 repeatedly. The range is from merely incidental notice to 
 extended observation. They may be gathering flowers on 
 the bankside, or may be at play in the water or upon it Al- 
 though poets usually prefer to emphasize the happiness of 
 children, play by the water does not always have a happy 
 ending, and poets have not been slow, especially in ballads 
 and narrative poems, to employ the pathetic incident of a 
 drowned child. ^ 
 
 In Summer, Thomson has described with more than 
 customary detail a youthful swimmer who is enjoying a 
 bath in a favorite swimming hole which shows a sandy 
 bottom. 
 
 1 Charles Lamb has developed this motive in To a River in 
 Which a Child was Droivned. Compare also the kidnapping scene 
 in Wilkie's Epigoniad, where the child's curiosity leads to his cap- 
 ture. See also Petherton Bridge, An Elegy, inscribed to the Rev. 
 Mr. Bean, by Mr. Gerrard fin The Lady's Poetical Magazine or 
 Beauties of British Poetry. London, 17S1). 
 
58 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Awhile he stands 
 Gazing the inverted landscape, half afraid 
 To meditate the blue profound below ; 
 Then plunges headlong down the circling flood. 
 His ebon tresses and his rosy cheek 
 Instant emerge ; and through the obedient wave, 
 At each short breathing by his lip repelled. 
 With arms and legs according well, he makes 
 As humour leads, an easy-winding path ; 
 While, from his polished sides, a dewy light 
 Effuses on the pleased spectators round. 
 
 Thomson enjoyed his description. His enthusiasm, perhaps 
 stimulated by recollection of his boyhood feats in the Scot- 
 tish Tweed, leads him into an encomium on swimming, 
 which, he believes, not only exhilarates the body but knits 
 the limbs. The mind too receives a sympathetic toning- up 
 from the glow of life in the body. His faith in the efficacy 
 of winter baths in the open shows that he was a cold-water 
 enthusiast, and believed with Locke in hardening the child's 
 body. He finally takes shelter in an historical parallel. 
 The mighty Roman arm that conquered the world had 
 learned "while tender, to subdue the wave." 
 
 Blair shows originality by bringing the "children gath- 
 ering flowers" motive into connection with a youngster at 
 play by the side of a rivulet. The episode is included with- 
 in the limits of a similitude, which is extended, however, to 
 nine blank verse lines. In spite of its sombre mood and 
 bald moralizing, Blair's Grave (1743) is nevertheless for 
 the lover of children one of the most rewarding of earlier 
 poems. Blair seems to look upon childhood as a rich mine 
 of illustrations. In his lines on the irresolute youngster, 
 the faithful details reveal a lively and half-amused interest. 
 The boy has been attracted by flowers on the opposite bank. 
 Poetic diction hardly obscures Blair's sympathetic obser- 
 vation in the line which introduces the growing fear of the 
 
THE GROWING BOY 59 
 
 boy: "How wishfully he looks to stem the tide." His 
 analysis of the fluctuating resolve, until the boy dips his 
 foot into the water, after which his fears are redoubled, 
 so that he runs off unmindful of the flowers on the farther 
 bank, is done with care for details. ^ 
 
 Gray's lines on swimming in the Ode on a Distant Pros- 
 pect of Eton College are generalized. His muse led him to 
 wonder what Eton boys were now bathing in Thames. 
 
 Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen 
 
 Full many a sprightly race 
 Disporting on thy margent green 
 
 The paths of pleasure trace, 
 Who foremost now delight to cleave 
 With pliant arm thy glassy wave ? 
 
 In Leven-Water, even the author of Peregrine Pickle could 
 wax sentimental over the "pure stream" in whose "trans- 
 parent wave" he had bathed his youthful limbs. In Auld 
 Lang Syne Burns recalls how 
 
 We: twa hae paidl'd in the burn, 
 Frae morning sun till dine. 
 
 In The Prelude Wordsworth is likewise more personal 
 than Gray in his recollection of how he had made "one long 
 bathing of a summer's day" in the Derwent, which flowed 
 at the foot of his father's garden. He has painstakingly 
 localized the experience. 
 
 the bright blue river passed 
 Along the margin of our terrace walk; 
 A tempting playmate whom we dearly loved. 
 Oh, many a time have I, a five years' child, 
 
 1 Compare The Stepping-Stones. Wordsworth does not devel- 
 op the situation beyond the lines. 
 
 Here the Child 
 Puts, when the high-swoln Flood runs fierce and wild, 
 His budding courage to the proof. 
 
60 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 In a small mill-race severed from his stream, 
 Made one long bathing of a summer's day; 
 Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again 
 Alternate, all a summer's day. . . . (Book I) 
 
 In Winter, Thomson has given a composite picture of 
 tobogganing and skating scenes that are international in 
 their subject-matter. He has not overlooked the ''happiest 
 of all the train," who is none other than the ''raptured boy" 
 lashing his whirling top. He is not individualized farther 
 than that. In Vicissitude, Mickle notes a boy who returns 
 at night from "his day-sport on the ice-bound stream." 
 Wordsworth, on the other hand, is specific and individual in 
 his skating scene, even to the precise statement of the hour 
 when Hawkeshead boys began the game of hunt the hare, 
 and caused an uproar that was echoed by the precipices. 
 They spread their coats to the wind and scudded down the 
 lake. Wordsworth's lines are suggestive of the keen frosty 
 air and the sense of bodily strength and animal vigor 
 which made these boys wheel about exultingly like an un- 
 tired horse that cares not for its home. It was a tumultuous 
 throng that hissed along the ice. Although the youthful 
 Wordsworth often left the uproar to skate by himself in 
 a quiet bay or to cut across the reflection of a star, and al- 
 though he reports one unusual experience when he stopped 
 so suddenly while in full career that the cliffs were moving 
 past him as though he beheld the visible motions of the 
 earth, yet the passage, more than any other that is descrip- 
 tive of his adventures in field and on mountain, depends on 
 sense impression for its effect. The gleam is there, but it 
 is subordinated to a keen sense of boyish delight in animal 
 motions. Natural phenomena of winter impressed them- 
 selves upon this sensitive boy even while he was enjoying a 
 game of loo or whist in Dame Tyson's cottage ; the game 
 was often interrupted by splitting fields of ice on Esthwaite 
 
 i 
 
THE GROWING BOY 61 
 
 when the pent-up air in freeing itself made "loud pro- 
 tracted yelling" like howling wolves. 
 
 II 
 
 Some of the most exhilarating lines in the early poems 
 picture the delight of children just out of school. To illus- 
 trate the mad scamper of the freed pack from the kennel, 
 Somerville in The Chase refers in an epic simile to boys who 
 rush from school and "give a loose to all their frolic play." 
 In The Schoolmistress, Shenstone's schoolboy, his task done, 
 ran forth with "jocund sprite" to freedom and to joy. 
 Somerville's enthusiasm for the chase rises so high that 
 everyone leaves his occupation at the huntsman's call, even 
 to the schoolboy who does not heed his master, but flies from 
 his prison. Mason makes his point in political verses by 
 comparing unfaithful legislators who have "quit St. 
 Stephen's dome" to truant schoolboys roaming with hound 
 and horn. In Syr Martyn, Mickle rounds out the picture 
 of youthful truants, who probably came honestly by their 
 British love of outdoor sport. Mickle's youngster is stand- 
 ing on a "green bank," in his hands an "ashen rod" which 
 obeys his guileful hands. He leads the mimic fly across the 
 way of a wary trout. He succeeds in hooking his quarry, 
 evidently to the admiration of the poet, who finally enters 
 into the situation with enthusiasm. This is reflected in the 
 minute details which bear witness to the skill of the young 
 fisherman, who showed himself precocious at fly casting 
 if not at his books. 
 
 Late in the century Bampfylde inclines to specific details 
 while quaintly visualizing 
 
 the boisterous string 
 Of school-imps, freed from dame's all dreaded sight, 
 Round the village cross, in many a wanton ring. ^ 
 
 1 To the Evening. 
 
62 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Mary Lamb's detached poem The Journey from School and 
 to School tries to catch the spirit of youngsters "jumbled 
 all together" in a coach : 
 
 Sometimes we laugh aloud aloud, 
 
 Sometimes huzzah, huzzah, 
 Who is so buoyant, free, and proud, 
 As we home-travelers are? 
 In The Prelude, Wordsworth recalls the ''noisy crew" 
 at Hawkeshead with their "round of tumult." They were 
 "mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds." It was 
 a "race of real children" who were "bandied up and down 
 by love and hate." In The Excursion he carries on the tra- 
 ditional figure of unwilling inmates of the schoolroom and 
 their glad release. The boys of the parsonage were 
 A few short hours of each returning day 
 The thriving prisoners of the village school: 
 And thence let loose, to seek their pleasant homes 
 Or range the grassy lawn in vacancy. 
 The open space known as the village green, which 
 often was adjacent to the highway, may be looked upon as 
 the eighteenth-century public playground for children. In 
 The Schoolmistress, when "Liberty" has unbarred her prison 
 door, children run pell-mell from school. 
 
 And now the grassy cirque had covered o'er 
 With boisterous revel-rout and wild uproar; 
 A thousand ways in wanton rings they run. 
 
 See in each sprite some various bent appear. 
 
 These rudely carol most incondite lay; 
 
 Those sauntering on the green, with jocund leer 
 
 Salute the stranger passing on his way; 
 
 Some builden fragile tenements of clay; 
 
 Some to the standing lake their courses bend, 
 
 With pebbles smooth at duck and drake to play. ^ 
 
 ^ It is a pity that the realistically conceived passages of 
 
 Shenstone, West, and Mickle are hobbled with Spenserian archaisms. 
 
 These poets were, of course, writing in the satirical tradition; but 
 
 they did observe childhood with more than customary sympathy. 
 
THE GROWING BOY 63 
 
 The generalized observation of children at play and in 
 mischief on city streets or on the highway goes back as 
 far at least as Swift. Merciless in the exposure of sham 
 and vanit}', he delighted to think of children who in chorus 
 heap ridicule upon a pompous person. Shenstone noted 
 how youngsters out of school mockingly salute passers-by. 
 Soame Jenyns took up the theme in The American Coach- 
 man, where the horses become unmanageable and run away. 
 In a few well chosen phrases he enters into the spirit of the 
 boys who enjoy the excitement, and by bawling of "Stop 
 them ! Stop them ! till they're hoarse" mean only to make 
 the horses run faster. This phase of children's activities is 
 probably best known from Cowper's incidental lines in 
 John Gilpin. Here, again, dogs bark, children scream, and 
 everyone bawls out "well done" as poor Gilpin gallops help- 
 lessly down the street. ^ The satirical tradition is carried 
 on in Chatterton's Resignation where 
 
 A lengthening train of boys displayed him great, 
 He seemed already minister of state. 
 
 Chatterton asks in the Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Catcott 
 
 (1769), 
 
 What pattern of humility and truth 
 
 Can bear the jeering ridicule of youth? 
 
 In Kew Gardens he alludes to the motive in a similitude : 
 
 Your infant muse should sport with other toys, 
 Man will not bear the ridicule of boys. 
 
 In the same poem he ridicules the officers of trainbands who 
 are stirred to action "When some bold urchin beats his drum 
 in sport." 
 
 1 Compare Cowper's letter (Edition Wright, Vol. Ill, page 59) : 
 "My brother drove up and down Olney in quest of us, almost as 
 often as you up and down Chancery Lane in quest of the Madans, 
 with fifty boys and girls at his tail, before he could find us." 
 
64 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Crabbe and Wordsworth modify the theme to suit 
 special situations such as a village burial or celebration of 
 victory. In this instance as in others that have to do with 
 children at play or their life in the nursery, the close ob- 
 servation of the satirists has been carried over by later poets 
 into their dominant mood of respect and reverence. The 
 motive still heightens effect, but the poet's intention is no 
 longer satirical. Crabbe sees idle children who, while wand- 
 ering about a newly-made grave, take on the "tone of woe." 
 In The Village (1783), children suspend play *To see the 
 bier that bears their ancient friend." He had been one 
 with them in all their idle sports, had formed the "pliant 
 bow," the "flying ball," and had also constructed a bat and 
 wicket for them. Wordsworth was stirred by the possibili- 
 ty of a Napoleonic invasion. His thoughts were absorbed 
 by the danger which threatened his beloved England. In- 
 cluded in the sonnets dedicated to National Independence 
 and Liberty is Anticipation, which celebrates an expected 
 victory over Napoleon on British ground. The poet calls 
 on old men to come forth and on wives to make merry ; but 
 the accompaniment of childish noises is not overlooked, 
 even to those of infants in arms. 
 
 ye little children, stun 
 Your grandame's ears with pleasure of your noise ! 
 Clap, infants, clap your hands ! 
 
 Curiously enough, the most detailed late-century ac- 
 count of games on the green occurs in Childhood of the 
 gloom-ridden White. When the dame's school had been 
 dismissed, the dame sat spinning before her cottage, and 
 "o'er her spectacles would often peer" to watch the gam- 
 bols of her scholars. 
 
 What clamorous throngs, what happy groups were seen, 
 
 In various postures scattering o'er the green. 
 
 Some shoot the marble, others join the chase 
 
 Of self-made stag, or run the emulous race; 
 
THE GROWING BOY 65 
 
 While others, seated on the dappled grass. 
 
 With doleful tales the light-winged minutes pass. 
 
 Well I remember how, with gesture starched, 
 
 A band of soldiers oft with pride we marched; 
 
 For banners, to a tall ash we did bind 
 
 Our handkerchiefs, flapping to the whistling wind; 
 
 And for our warlike arms we sought the mead. 
 
 And guns and spears we made of brittle reed; 
 
 Then, in uncouth array, our feats to crown, 
 
 We stormed some ruined pigstye for a town. 
 
 Wordsworth pictures an equally wholesome afternoon's 
 sport on a bowling green picturesquely laid out on the 
 garden slope above the Lion Inn on Lake Windermere. 
 Boys from Hawkeshead had to walk to the western shore 
 of the lake, and then row across to the inn. 
 
 There, while through half an afternoon we played 
 On the smooth platform, whether skill prevailed 
 Or happy blunder triumphed, bursts of glee 
 Made all the mountains ring. 
 
 Sentiment often colours side glances to play. In Pollio 
 (1762), Mickle feels in harmony with his surroundings on 
 a peaceful evening while ''playful schoolboys wanton o'er 
 the green." In Lochleven Bruce draws an idyllic picture 
 of a happy valley in which, for once, girls with golden hair 
 trip nimble-footed on the green, and wanton in their play 
 with "blooming boys." Grandsires of the village sit in 
 "reverend row" in the sunshine before the gate, and shake 
 their "aged locks with joy" while they recall "well remem- 
 bered stories of their youth." ^ In Blake's Nurse's Song 
 
 1 Compare The Deserted Village : 
 
 The young contending as the old surveyed. 
 Mr. Hudson's Ode to Fancy gives a picture of dancing swains and 
 damsels : 
 
 The simple notes, and merry gambols fire 
 
 (Placed by the hawthorne-hedge) each ancient sire. 
 
66 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 the heart of the poet is made glad by the sounds of chil- 
 dren at play on the green. In their reply to the nurse's sug- 
 gestion that the sun has gone down and it is time to stop 
 play, the words of the children suggest a typically English 
 pastoral background : 
 
 in the sky the little birds fly, 
 And the hills are all covered with sheep. 
 
 The sentimental note is heard as soon as the poet recol- 
 lects his own early play. In this mood the generalized in- 
 terest in happy children tends to give way to a keen realiza- 
 tion of the difference between the cares and sorrows of 
 manhood and the undisturbed happiness of childhood. 
 
 Althougli Gray feels a ''momentary bliss" as he thinks of 
 schoolboy play at Eton, his recollections induce melancholy 
 musings. The 'little victims" at play in the years when 
 ignorance is bliss are "regardless of their doom." Unlike 
 the hardier truants of Somerville and Mickle, they snatch 
 a fearful joy outside the bounds set by school authorities. 
 
 Some bold adventurers disdain 
 The limits of their little reign, 
 
 And unknown regions dare descry; 
 Still as they run they look behind. 
 They hear a voice in every wind. 
 
 And snatch a fearful joy. 
 
 Within bounds the "idle progeny" chase the "rolling circle's 
 speed" or "urge the flying ball." The play of these school- 
 boys may have been in fact "redolent of joy and youth," but 
 Gray's melancholy lines do not call to mind lively, scamper- 
 ing children. They may have quarreled and have forgotten 
 their tears "as soon as shed," but the sombre muse of the 
 poet hardly allows him to enter into sports as tame as those 
 recorded. It is perhaps unjust to say that the lines are 
 frigid, but the glow, if indeed it is reflected at all, is cer- 
 
THE GROWING BOY 67 
 
 tainly dull. The muse of Gray did not find congenial matter 
 in the coarser pleasures and glad animal spirits of children. 
 Their activities are sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought.^ 
 Yet in his contemplation of lawns and flowerets, the 
 thought of children tripping lightly over them came to Gray 
 with such peculiar grace that he has written what is probab- 
 ly the most poetic line on childhood in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. It occurs in the "redbreast" stanza, which was first 
 printed just ahead of the epitaph in the third edition of the 
 Elegy. Unfortunately it was later canceled, for Gray has 
 written opposite the stanza in the Pembroke MS., "Omitted, 
 1753." 
 
 There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, 
 
 By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; 
 
 The red-breast loves to build, and warble there, 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 2 
 
 Although Scott's lyric To Childhood is more vivacious, 
 it also is motivated by the belief that "ignorance is bliss." 
 Scott and Gray do not link childhood and manhood. In 
 their conception, children are carefree because they do not 
 realize what life has in store for them ; they are ignorant of 
 the ills of fortune which come with manhood. Neither Gray 
 nor Scott looks upon play as a preparation for life. Gray 
 is moved to melancholy, and writes in the mood of the grave- 
 yard poets. Although Scott is not sombre, he too is moved 
 to sadness over what has been irrevocably lost. 
 
 ^ Contrast Thomson's lively boy {Castle of Indolence, Canto I, 
 Stanza XXV) : 
 
 The lad leaped lightly at his master's call : 
 
 He was, to weet, a little roguish page, 
 
 Save sleep and play, who minded naught at all. 
 
 2 Compare Martial's lines on the little girl Erotion (Horace 
 Scudder, Childhood in Literature and Art). 
 
68 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Childhood! happiest stage of life, 
 Free from care and free from strife, 
 Free from Memory's ruthless reign, 
 Fraught with scenes of former pain; 
 Free from Fancy's cruel skill. 
 Fabricating future ill; 
 Time, when all that meets the view, 
 All can charm, for all is new; 
 How thy long-lost hours I mourn. 
 Never, never to return! 
 
 Then to toss the circling ball, 
 Caught rebounding from the wall; 
 Then the mimic ship to guide 
 Down the kennel's dirty tide; 
 Then the hoop's revolving pace 
 Through the dusty street to chase; 
 O what joy — it once was mine. 
 Childhood, matchless boon of thine! 
 How thy long-lost hours I mourn. 
 Never, never to return ! 
 
 At the close of the century White also recognizes a break 
 in continuity, and mourns the loss in Childhood. 
 
 Sweet reign of innocence, when no crime defiles, 
 But each new object brings attendant smiles; 
 When future evils never haunt the sight, 
 But all is pregnant with unmixed delight. ^ 
 
 1 Cp. Shenstone's conception in Economy: 
 O lovely source 
 
 Of generous foibles, youth ! when opening minds 
 
 Are honest as the light, lucid as air. 
 
 As fostering breezes kind, as linnets gay, 
 
 Tender as buds, and lavish as the Spring! 
 Childhood is here the source of manhood; it is not a separate unit 
 of existence. In his Schoolmistress he definitely recognizes contin- 
 uity of development in the lines on a youthful bench of bishops. 
 Wordsworth was familiar with the poem. 
 
THE GROWING BOY 69 
 
 In "Sweet angel of my natal hour" Hoyland likewise is 
 saddened by the dominance of cold reason in manhood ; but 
 his closing stanza seems to suggest the possibility of a return 
 to the happiness of childhood days. 
 
 Come then, resume thy guardian pow'r, 
 Sweet angel of my natal hour, 
 
 To whom the charge was given ! 
 Once more receive me to thy care, 
 For ever kind, for ever near, 
 
 If such the will of Heaven. 
 
 Lovibond's On Rebuilding Combe Neville recognizes 
 continuity of development from the child's play to the man's 
 activities. As a schoolboy at Kingston, Lovibond often 
 availed himself of the rich heritage of British schoolboys — 
 who, wherever their school may be situated, are certain to 
 be within walking distance of an abbey, cathedral, or castle 
 — and roamed within the precincts of '^Neville's ancient 
 halls." 
 
 Loved seat, how oft, in childish ease. 
 
 Along thy woods I strayed, 
 Now venturous climbed embowering trees. 
 
 Now sported in their shade. 
 
 Now, languid with the noontide beams. 
 Explored thy precious springs. . . . 
 
 He regrets the "improvements" that are destroying the 
 favorite spot of his outdoor play, and touches lightly on the 
 loss of the carefree spirit of his early days. 
 
 Along thy hills the chase I led 
 
 With echoing hounds and horns. 
 
 And left for thee my downy bed, 
 Unplanted yet with thorns. 
 
 Although his recollections are generalized, the poem con- 
 tains a far-away suggestion of Wordsworth's backward look 
 
70 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 that exalts play hours as a valuable part of a boy's edu- 
 cation. He seems to believe that the dreams of his boyhood 
 fashioned his manhood. 
 
 Each smiling joy was there, that springs 
 
 In life's delicious prime; 
 There young Ambition plumed his wings. 
 
 And mocked the flight of Time. 
 
 There patriot passions fired my breast 
 
 With Freedom's glowing themes, 
 And Virtue's image rose confessed 
 
 In bright Platonic dreams. 
 
 Mickle definitely conceives of play as a factor in mould- 
 ing character. His Epitaph on General Wolfe (1759?) 
 strikes a modern note in the desire to direct a child's activi- 
 ties by guiding his play instincts. 
 
 Briton, approach with awe this sacred shrine, 
 
 And if the Father's sacred name be thine, 
 
 If thou hast marked thy stripling's cheeks to glow 
 
 When war was mentioned, or the Gallic foe. 
 
 If shining arms his infant sports employ, 
 
 And warm his rage — Here bring the warlike boy, 
 
 Here let him stand, whilst thou enrapt shalt tell 
 
 How fought the glorious Wolfe, how glorious fell. 
 
 Then when thou mark'st his bursting ardour rise. 
 
 Catch his young hand. 
 
 In Bruce and Beattie, interest in genetics is unmistakably 
 reflected. Bruce, whose love of remote valleys and roman- 
 tic glens is symptomatic of a coming master like Words- 
 worth, has Lavina leave her schoolmates at their play in 
 order to roam in search of ''curious flower" or "nest of bird 
 unknown." In this way she learned to love wild flowers. 
 An early sister of the nature-loving children of Wordsworth, 
 Lavina thus revealed in her youth ("the index of maturer 
 years") a romantic love of nature in solitary haunts. In 
 
THE GROWING BOY 71 
 
 tracing the child's play in Lochlevcn, Bruce is aware of its 
 influence on character. Beattie, whose intention in The 
 Minstrel is to trace the growth of a minstrel from child- 
 hood, notes similar traits in Edwin. 
 
 Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled; 
 
 Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray 
 
 Of squabbling imps ; but to the forest sped 
 
 Or roamed at large the lonely mountain head, 
 
 Or, where the maze of some bewildered stream 
 
 To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led. . . . 
 
 English schoolboys generally, it is evident from senti- 
 mental poetry, did not love birds and flowers in the mood 
 of Lavina and Edwin. Marauding truants rouse the senti- 
 mental poet's indignation. In The Blackbirds (1753) Jago 
 offers to take the bird's nest into the thickest brake "imper- 
 vious to the schoolboy's eye." In The Goldfinches (1735) he 
 vents his wrath on the ''ungentlest of his tribe," a truant 
 who had despoiled the nest of its brood. The indignant 
 poet accounts for the truant's lack of fine feeling by refer- 
 ence to his school exercises, which reveal no sense for 
 harmony : he blunders over his scrawl, which is charac- 
 terized by ''hideous prosody" and "concord false." There 
 seems to have been need of an Audubon society in the senti- 
 mental decades of the eighteenth century, for in The Linnet 
 Graeme notices how the bird had built her nest where "no 
 savage boy" could find it, and later how the mother linnet's 
 song did not protect her against "The schoolboy's lawless 
 stone." 
 
 Cowper's experiences at school, and his later humanitar- 
 ian interests, precluded sympathy with outdoor sports even 
 of the shepherd boy who, while his flocks are peacefully 
 grazing, "snares the mole" or with "ill-fashioned hook" 
 draws the "incautious minnow" from the streamlet. The 
 colorless lines in themselves give evidence not only of Cow- 
 
72 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 per's lack of sympathy with such pastimes, but also of his 
 inability to enter into the spirit of the boy whose rustic sim- 
 plicity otherwise appeals to him. Cowper takes every op- 
 portunity to condemn all forms of sport that have as their 
 object the killing of animals. 
 
 Wordsworth, who especially in The Prelude looks on 
 play in fields and woods as an educational force in moulding 
 character, wrote with equal fervor in defense of hunted 
 animals, but was sturdy Englishman enough to remember 
 with enthusiasm the joys of fishing he had experienced 
 while a schoolboy at Hawkeshead. He records with '*no re- 
 luctant voice" how he and his mates followed 
 
 the rod and line, 
 True symbol of hope's foolishness, whose strong 
 And unreproved enchantment led us on 
 By rocks and pools shut out from every star. 
 All the green summer, to forlorn cascades 
 Among the windings hid of mountain brooks. (I, 485-490) 
 
 In comparison with earlier poets, he gains power in propor- 
 tion to his ability to infuse into the recollection of his early 
 experience something of the natural magic of the mountain 
 background into which by a subtle transformation he merges 
 his simple adventures. His genius interfused with the 
 bare statements of narrative a transcendental interpretation 
 that in this instance tends to obscure the outlines of fact. 
 The connotative power of such words as ''symbol," "en- 
 chantment," ''star," "forlorn," "windings hid," which are in 
 themselves not essential to the story of his fishing trip, tends 
 to carry the attention away from merely external notice of 
 the experience to a consideration of its significance. He is 
 not reproducing the facts of the fishing expedition, as 
 did Mickle, to the smallest point of technique. The passage 
 is rather, in all its beauty, an interpretation of the nuances 
 which nature vouchsafes, not to the mighty hunter, who is 
 
THE GROWING BOY 73 
 
 bent upon capturing his prey, but to the sensitive boy who 
 responds to spiritual suggestions of external nature. 
 Wordsworth tells of no quarry. Where Somerville and 
 Mickle enjoyed the physical delights involved in the un- 
 equal test of wits between man and animal, Wordsworth 
 went so far as to destroy the efficacy of rod and line except 
 as symbols that led the boy into a land of enchantment. 
 
 He differs from preceding poets in the willingness to use 
 concrete details. His interest lies in their influence on 
 character development. In The Excursion the two school- 
 boys who burst upon the company in the parsonage are 
 ''keen anglers" elated with ''unusual spoil" (VH). One 
 bears a willow pannier, and the other carries a smooth blue 
 stone on which are outspread in order from largest to 
 smallest a "store of gleaming crimson-spotted trouts." The 
 boys tell the story of each catch, not omitting that of the 
 "very monarch of the brook" who had escaped them. 
 Wordsworth employs this solid substratum of detailed fact 
 as a basis for interpretation of the character of the boys. 
 
 In the episode of the raven's nest in The Prelude, Words- 
 worth's point of view stands out in sharp contrast to that 
 of the sentimental poets who wholly condemned schoolboys 
 for pilfering nests. When spring had warmed the valley 
 of Yewdale, he and his companions moved as 
 
 plunderers where the mother bird 
 Had in high places built her lodge. (I) 
 
 Unlike Jago and Graeme, he does not wholly condemn these 
 incursions: they were not an end in themselves, but the 
 pilfering led to realizations of spiritual manifestations that 
 would not have come to the boy from any other source: 
 
 though mean 
 Our object and inglorious, yet the end 
 Was not ignoble. 
 
74 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 When the boy has finally climbed to where he overhangs 
 the raven's nest, Wordsworth loses sight of the quarry in an 
 interpretation of the boy's sense of oneness with eternal 
 forces. 
 
 Oh ! when I have hung 
 Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass 
 And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock 
 But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed) 
 Suspended by the blast that blew amain, 
 Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time 
 While on the perilous ridge I hung alone. 
 With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind 
 Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky 
 Of earth — and with what motion moved the clouds ! 
 
 Far from overlooking the physical boy and his natural ac- 
 tivities, the poet is nevertheless absorbed in an effort to 
 catch fleeting glimpses of a growing boy's soul life. This 
 he accomplishes by analysing his own early experiences in 
 fields and woods, where nature taught him in boyhood with 
 inscrutable workmanship those elements that are a needful 
 part of the calm moments he enjoys when worthy of him- 
 self. 
 
 Praise to the end! 
 Thanks to the means which nature deigned to employ; 
 Whether her fearless visitings, or those 
 That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light 
 Opening the peaceful clouds ; or she may use 
 Severer interventions, ministry 
 More palpable, as best might suit her aim. 
 
 This deeper insight is revealed, again, in his notice of 
 another phase of the growing boy's activities. Words- 
 worth extended interest in outdoor play to include the 
 child's delight in boating. Hand in hand with this ex- 
 tension of boundaries there will be noted a difference of 
 treatment. There is a vast difference between the early 
 
THE GROWING BOY 75 
 
 poet's brief generalization and almost bare enumera- 
 tion, ^ and the more leisurely lines of Wordsworth which 
 retard the action in order to linger affectionately over de- 
 tails. Wordsworth's forerunners — for especially Bruce, 
 Lovibond, Scott, and Beattie were his poetic forbears in 
 their ability to feel if not fully to express recollection of 
 childish play — had not learned the art of poetically fusing 
 natural phenomena, to which they sensitively reacted, with a 
 natural philosophy of which they were only dimly conscious. 
 Wordsworth's narrative of the boat ride in The Excursion 
 incorporates details of preparation in the vicar's cottage, 
 the walk down the stream bed to the lake, the arrival of the 
 two boys, the row to the island, the picnic, and the return. 
 The bare details necessary for a visualization of the outing 
 would not demand half of the one hundred and fifty blank 
 verse lines Wordsworth devoted to his description. The 
 essential difference between the earlier poets and later master 
 does not lie merely in the addition of such details as skim- 
 ming stones and awakening the echoes, or gathering water 
 lilies, details which in themselves enrich the development of 
 the theme. He has interwoven comments that reveal his 
 deep insight into the significance of the minutest facts of 
 observation. His method is discursive, but unity and 
 harmony are achieved through the sympathetic observation 
 of a seer who looks upon all manifestations of life with a 
 high and clearly formulated philosophy that enhances the 
 depth and beauty of external nature. He is not feeling his 
 way dimly, but is working with conscious art, so that he 
 may, instead of announcing his mood and then illustrating 
 it enumeratively, fuse the mood and the external fact with 
 an art that awakens in his reader a feeling for the unity of 
 spirit and matter as manifested in the individual experience. 
 
 1 Compare Thomas Warton's The Hamlet. 
 
76 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Islands in Lake Windermere were on many occasions 
 the goal of boat races and boating excursions. His effective 
 lines image the youthful rowers and their sweeping oars. 
 But his interest is not in the race so much as in the lesson 
 which the quiet retreat on the island taught of the self- 
 sufficing power of solitude. In the evening when the boys 
 lay in their boats while a comrade on the island played on 
 a flute, the young Wordsworth's sympathies were enlarged, 
 and the ''common range of visible things" grew dearer to 
 him. 
 
 He not only throws about common experience a halo of 
 imagination, but succeeds in associating, and often fusing, 
 the experience with the powers of the universe. In such 
 treatment children no longer stand apart, but are merged 
 with the eternal flux of life as revealed in nature. Words- 
 worth is not satisfied to rest in the observation of phenomena, 
 but goes on to interpret their significance for the child. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The growing tendency to look back with affection on 
 early associations is revealed most fully in connection with 
 the change that took place in the eighteenth century from 
 the rationalistic to the sentimental point of view. While 
 the worship of reason was reaching its height in the en- 
 cyclopedists and the academic war of pamphlets over a sub- 
 ject like deism, a new poetic method slowly gained a foot- 
 hold by emphasizing the trustworthiness of impulses from 
 the heart. Reason, it was beginning to be felt, had failed 
 to provide an adequate solution for the momentous prob- 
 lems of religion and philosophy, and poets were increasingly 
 willing to turn elsewhere for an answer to their question- 
 ings.^ Their willingness to itrust emotions had its eff'ect on 
 
 ^ An Essay on the Universe (1739) by Moses Browne: 
 Who scorn the Modish Sceptic's scoffing Chair, 
 Faultless in Manners, in Opinion clear. 
 
THE GROWING BOY ^7 
 
 poetic treatment of childhood. The emotional interpreta- 
 tion of life irresistibly led poets to a contemplation of their 
 childhood days in such a mood as that of Gray, whose lines 
 enshrine the countryside near Eton and Stoke Pogis : 
 
 Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade. 
 
 Ah, fields beloved in vain, 
 Where once my careless childhood strayed, 
 
 A stranger yet to pain. 
 I feel the gales, that from ye blow, 
 A momentary bliss bestow. 
 
 This tendency is especially strong in those transition poets 
 who were born in remote villages and country places where 
 they had tasted the sweets of solitude and come in contact 
 with the life of woods and fields. ^ There they had vaguely 
 
 1 Although one must always except Charles Lamb's affection 
 for London, it is significant that the affection for native fields did not 
 flourish in city or village surroundings. Scott recalls how rural 
 Amwell stirred him to poetry in early youth; but even he, whose 
 name has become attached to that of the hamlet, sings of "lovely 
 sylvan scenes." Burns is not thinking of the village when he refers 
 incidentally but feelingly to Ayr, "my dear, my native ground." 
 Fitzgerald, obviously writing in imitation of Goldsmith, would dwell 
 upon the charms of his native village, but like Scott notices chiefly 
 surrounding farms and "verdant hills." There is humor too in his 
 inability to weave the name of his beloved Tipperary into verse 
 (The Academic Sportsman) : 
 
 And thee, dear village! loveliest of the clime, 
 (Fain would I name thee, but I can't in rhyme) 
 Where first my years in youthful pleasures passed. 
 Crabbe's native Aldborough has come off badly in the lines which 
 image its hideous squalor. Bristol was doubly unfortunate as re- 
 membered by Chatterton and Lovell. They speak of their native 
 city in terms of vituperation. Chatterton's Last Verses are bitter: 
 Farewell, Bristolia's dingy piles of brick, 
 Lovers of Mammon, worshippers of Trick. 
 Ye spurned the boy who gave you antique lays. 
 Lovell's Bristol apostrophizes Chatterton as the ill-starred youth 
 
78 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 felt spiritual ministrations which constitute the determining 
 factor in Wordsworth's recollections of childhood play. 
 
 The attention of early poets to the native fields motive 
 prepared the way for Wordsworth's conception in The Pre- 
 lude and Ode. Recollection, therefore, must be associated 
 with agreeable sensations, for in the romantic development 
 the tendency is to purify and exalt childhood. Unpleasant 
 associations have a negative influence that is out of harmony 
 with the poet's chief intention. ^ This excludes, for in- 
 stance, the sentiment that departure or banishment from 
 native fields is a misfortune. ^ A favorite device is to pic- 
 
 who was luckless to have been born in a city where no one fostered 
 
 worth. He writes of Bristol : 
 
 The widows mourn, the fatherless complain, 
 But (shame to Bristol!) still they call in vain. 
 
 1 In Johnson's penance for a boyish act of disobedience one feels 
 the genuine heart-Jbeats of the pious doctor. "Once, indeed, I was 
 disobedient; I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. 
 Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was 
 painful. A few years ago, I desired to atone for this fault. I went 
 to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time 
 bareheaded in the rain, on the spot where my father's stall used to 
 stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." 
 
 2 Logan's The Lovers pictures Harriet, who is about to flee 
 with Henry, weeping sentimentally over her departure from the 
 castle in which she was born. Bruce's Lochleven No More is con- 
 ceived in a mood that emphasizes equally the pains of separation 
 from native fields and from his boyish love Peggy. The legal au- 
 thority William Blackstone pictures the man condemned to exile 
 as turning about on an eminence that will shut him off from home. 
 (A Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse): 
 
 There, melting at the well-known view. 
 
 Drops a last tear, and bids adieu. 
 In an Elegy, Daniel Hayes vaguely connects the sentiment with in- 
 herited misfortunes when he depicts the longing of the man who 
 feels that he is probably expiating an impious act which was com- 
 
THE GROWING BOY 79 
 
 ture the nostalgia of the sea-roving sailor. In Syr Martyn, 
 Mickle incidentally notices a sea rover who had toiled on 
 the seven seas for ten long years, cheered by the hope of 
 revisiting his native soil. Arrived at his childhood home, 
 he wandered over the meadow and in the shade of the elms 
 by the streamlet, where he listened to the cawing rooks. 
 Mickle enters into the spirit of the wanderer and makes a 
 genuine effort to express the sentiment that prompts recol- 
 lection of childhood haunts. 
 
 In lines Composed by the Sea-Shore, Wordsworth ana- 
 lyzes the common human emotions that lead to a desire 
 for the happiness of obscurity. The specifically romantic 
 attitude toward native fields sprang from this longing for 
 quiet after the labors and disappointments of life. Words- 
 worth holds that where realization of the dream is possible 
 to men in many ordinary walks of life, the sailor is com- 
 pelled to rest in the world of memory. On the restless sea 
 the sailor, more than men elsewhere, knows how 
 
 sad it is, in sight of foreign shores, 
 Daily to think on old familiar doors. 
 Hearths loved in childhood, and ancestral floors. 
 
 It was common even in the classicist tradition to take 
 notice of the normal human trait that leads men to think 
 
 mitted perhaps by an ancestor, and which has brought upon him 
 the curse of separation from friends in native fields. In a poem at- 
 tributed to Burns, the Elegy on "Stella" (1787), the subject of which 
 is supposed to be Mary Campbell, whose grave he visited in the 
 kirkyard in the West Highlands, Burns's rising tears flow for the 
 unhappy Stella who was stricken far from her loved friends. — 
 Compare lines from one of Shenstone's Songs: 
 
 Not more, the schoolboy that expires 
 
 Far from his native home, requires 
 
 To see some friend's familiar face, 
 
 Or meet a parent's last embrace. 
 Compare also Elinor (1799), one of Southey's Botany-Bay Eclogues. 
 
80 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 back affectionately to their childhood days. But the clas- 
 sicists and their followers did not attach to the recollection 
 any such mood as that of the romanticists. They may note 
 how in manhood it is human to look with dear regard on 
 childhood. But their observation refers merely to the com- 
 monplace experience which Somerville expressed in his pre- 
 face to The Chase: 'The old and infirm have at least this 
 privilege, that they can recall to their minds those scenes of 
 joy in which they once delighted. . . . The amusements 
 of our youth are the boast and comfort of our declining 
 years." 
 
 In Birth-Day Verses on Mr. Ford, Swift voiced the pre- 
 romantic attitude toward locality with reference to affection 
 for native fields. 
 
 She bid me, with a serious face, 
 Be sure conceal the time and place ; 
 And not my compliment to spoil, 
 By calling this your native soil. 
 
 Later he addresses Mr. Ford. 
 
 Can you on Dublin look with scorn; 
 Yet here were you and Ormond born. 
 
 The following lines make clear the lack of sympathy which 
 the classicists felt with what by the end of the century had 
 become a commonplace in Romanticist verse. 
 
 Oh! were but you and I so wise 
 
 To see with Robert Grattan's eyes. 
 
 Robin adores that spot of earth. 
 
 That literal spot, which gave him birth, 
 
 And swears Belcamp is, to his taste, 
 
 As fine as Hampton Court at least. 
 
 When to your friends you would enhance 
 
 The praise of Italy or France, 
 
 For grandeur, elegance, or wit. 
 
 We gladly hear you, and submit: 
 
THE GROWING BOY 81 
 
 But then, to come and keep a clutter 
 For this or that side of the gutter. 
 To live in this or the' other isle, 
 We cannot think it worth your while; 
 For, take it kindly or amiss, 
 The difference but amounts to this, 
 We bury on our side the Channel 
 In linen, and you your's in flannel. ^ 
 
 The essentially new element is the romantic emotion which 
 was awakened by recollection of specific localities. This 
 is extended so that companions of childhood are remembered 
 in connection with native fields. Lifelong friendship is en- 
 riched by recollection of childhood play. In Cowper's lines 
 on Edward Thurlow, the promotion of his friend to the 
 Lord High Chancellorship is enhanced by the recollection 
 that his abilities had been recognized from the days when 
 he was a fellow apprentice. Cowper's To Warren Hastings 
 is attached, in the speaking title, to their schoolboy fellowship 
 at Westminster. Cowper can not believe the accusations 
 brought against his schoolmate, whom he had known when 
 young to possess those gentle qualities which could not 
 have made him "the worst of men." 
 
 In Coming to the Country, Graeme identifies early friend- 
 ship with native fields in a mood of personal reminiscence. 
 
 1 Contrast On Revisiting the Place of my Nativity (1800), in 
 which Robert Bloomfield tells how, after he had sighed for "Twelve 
 successive Summers," he "heard the language of enchanting 
 Spring," 
 
 "Come to thy native groves and fruitful fields. 
 
 * 
 
 I've clothed them all; the very Woods where thou 
 
 In infancy learn'dst praise from every bough." 
 "Remoter bliss" no longer glows in his bosom, 
 
 for I have heard and seen 
 
 The long-remembered voice, the church, the green. 
 
82 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Hail, dear companions of my youthful days! 
 Frequented hills and natal valleys, hail! 
 
 The romantic emphasis is clear also in the mood and rhythm 
 of Bruce's apostrophe to his friend Mr. George Anderson in 
 Lochleven. He definitely associates their friendship with 
 the district of Lochleven. 
 
 Nor shall the Muse forget thy friendly heart, 
 
 O Lelius! partner of my youthful hours; 
 
 How often, rising from the bed of peace, 
 
 We would walk forth to meet the summer morn, 
 
 Inhaling health and harmony of mind; 
 
 Philosophers and friends; while science beamed 
 
 With ray divine as lovely on our minds 
 
 As yonder orient sun, whose welcome light 
 
 Revealed the vernal landscape to the view. 
 
 Yet oft, unbending from more serious thought, 
 
 Much of the looser follies of mankind, 
 
 Hum'rous and gay, we'd talk, and much would laugh ; 
 
 While, ever and anon, their foibles vain, 
 
 Imagination offered to our view. 
 
 Jago's attachment to Shenstone was enhanced by the 
 thought of their having been associated in youthful toil at 
 Solihul, where Shenstone had called Jago with friendly voice 
 from giddy sports to follow him ''intent on better themes." 
 In Edge Hill, Jago recalls their congenial pursuits 
 
 On Cherwell's banks, by kindred science nursed. 
 
 Southey unbends as far as his temperament allows him, 
 in the lines To Margaret Hill (1798), when he recalls de- 
 lightful companionship with his cousin in childhood. 
 Though he has not seen her for many years, he owes lier a 
 debt of kindness. 
 
 For you and I 
 Grew up together, and, when we look back 
 Upon old times, our recollections paint 
 The same familiar faces. 
 
THE GROWING BOY 83 
 
 If he had the power of Merlin he would "make brave witch- 
 craft" and carry her back with him to the play hours of their 
 carefree childhood when they played with a Noah's ark, 
 read in "Pilgrim's Progress," or lived free as on an island 
 where no mariner might disturb them. 
 
 In such a blessed isle 
 We might renew the days of infancy, 
 And life, like a long childhood, pass away 
 Without one care. 
 
 The association of life-long friendship and native fields 
 finds its classical statement in Auld Lang Syne. |The frank 
 human loyalty of a friendship that has stood the severe tests 
 of separation in time and place has nowhere else in English 
 literature found such unaffected expression. The warm- 
 hearted peasant poet, who was human and a good com- 
 panion always, felt the emotion in its purity, and expressed 
 it without embellishment or adornment in the simple rhythm 
 of folk song. Every line has the air of finality and univer- 
 sality characteristic of a classic. Its place is secure in the 
 ritual of friendship. 
 
 We twa hae run about the braes, 
 
 And pou'd the gowans fine; 
 But we've wandered many a weary fitt. 
 
 Sin' auld lang syne. 
 
 We twa hae paidl'd in the burn, 
 
 Frae morning sun till dine; 
 But seas between us braid hae roared 
 
 Sin' auld lang syne. 
 
 Wordsworth emphasizes the personal element. Dorothy 
 is dearer to Wordsworth because of their companionship 
 when she was "A little Prattler among men." He gives ex- 
 pression to this mood in his tribute to Dorothy in The Spar- 
 rcmfs Nest (1801), when he recalls 
 
84 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The Sparrow's dwelling, which, hard by 
 
 My Father's house, in wet or dry 
 
 My sister Emmeline and I 
 
 Together visited. 
 
 * 
 
 The Blessing of my later years 
 
 Was with me when a boy. 
 
 Fate, however, has not always allowed the poet to take 
 a "cup o' kindness" with his life-long friend. The poet 
 must often in later years mourn the loss of his childhood 
 friend. In his monody on the death of William Arnot 
 (Daphnis: A Monody), Bruce regrets that the promise of 
 youthful friendship as revealed in their early companion- 
 ship has not been fulfilled. 
 
 Oft by the side of Leven's crystal Lake, 
 
 Trembling beneath the closing lids of light, 
 
 With slow short-measured steps we took our walk. 
 
 * 
 
 O, happy days ! — for ever, ever gone ! 
 
 When o'er the flowery green we ran, we played 
 
 With blooms bedropped by youthful Summer's hand; 
 
 Or, in the willow's shade, 
 
 We mimic castles built among the sand, 
 
 Soon by the sounding surge to be beat down. 
 
 In tracing the emergence of the childhood theme it is 
 fascinating to note how transition poets grafted tender 
 shoots of thought and emotion on the classicist stock. At 
 times the classicist element predominates, especially in the 
 poet's inability to create a new vocabulary that will ade- 
 quately express his novel emotions, with the result that he 
 must have recourse to stock poetic diction; or, as in the 
 twilight musings of the sensitive Collins, divinations of the 
 introspective attitude are daintily shadowed forth in a deli- 
 cate lacework of classical allusions. (Bruce's To a Fountain 
 is especially interesting in its indications of the slow pro- 
 
THE GROWING BOY 85 
 
 cess of separation that took place between traditional and 
 new poetic material. Bruce's poem shows him to be a 
 transition poet in whom the combined backward look and 
 romantic vision lead almost to a confusion of treatment. 
 The opening stanzas indicate that he was prompted by affec- 
 tion for native fields; yet he could not break away from 
 expression of conventional pastoral love for his Anna, his 
 play companion, who is addressed as "Young Naiad of the 
 vale." 
 
 Then in simple language that suggests the later roman- 
 ticists, Bruce gives a clear statement of recollection of his 
 happy childhood, together with a more conventional glimpse 
 of the age of innocence. 
 
 Fount of my native wood ! thy murmurs greet 
 My ear, like poet's heavenly strain : 
 Fancy pictures in a dream 
 The golden days of youth. 
 
 O state of innocence ! O paradise ! 
 In Hope's gay garden, Fancy views 
 Golden blossoms, golden fruits, 
 And Eden ever green. 
 
 This suggests still another motive of special interest here — 
 that of friendship: 
 
 Where now, ye dear companions of my youth ! 
 Ye brothers of my bosom ! where 
 Do ye tread the walks of life, 
 Wide scattered o'er the world? 
 
 In the midst of the closing stanzas, which show a tendency 
 toward eighteenth-century moralizing, he gives expression 
 to the consolation that comes from romantic contemplation 
 of external nature mingled with the gleam that the poet's 
 imagination brings to nature. 
 
86 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 But Hope's fair visions, and the beams of Joy, 
 Shall cheer my bosom: I will sing 
 Nature's beauty, Nature's birth. 
 
 In the face of his loss he will be inspired by visions that 
 are fair as the landscapes of heavenly bliss. If his diction 
 and poetic method reveal dependence on tradition, the 
 forward look is nevertheless unmistakable in the predomi- 
 nant mood, which emphasizes recollection of locality in con- 
 nection with childhood, and which is expressed with a high 
 seriousness that involves suggestions of nature worship set 
 forth in the language of religion. 
 
 Mickle's elegy on his brother {Pollio, 1762) was sug- 
 gested when the poet revisited the woods and streams of 
 their childhood play. His heart is charged with grief at 
 sight of familiar scenes. 
 
 Oft with the rising sun, when life was new, 
 
 Along the woodland have I roamed with thee; 
 
 Oft by the moon have brushed the evening dew, 
 When all was fearless innocence and glee. 
 
 The sainted well, where yon bleak hill declines. 
 Has oft been conscious of those happy hours; 
 
 But now the hill, the river crowned with pines. 
 
 And sainted well, have lost their cheering powers : 
 
 For thou art gone — My guide, my friend, oh ! where. 
 Where hast thou fled, and left me here behind? 
 
 My tenderest wish, my heart to thee was bare, 
 Oh, now cut off each passage to thy mind. 
 
 It would be unjust to Mickle to compare his lines with Ten- 
 nyson's on Arthur Hallam, yet he gives simple expression 
 to a deep sense of irreparable loss, in lines that turn to 
 familiar scenes with an appreciation of external nature as a 
 witness to the friendship that has been severed by death. 
 
 i 
 
THE GROWING BOY 87 
 
 From the time of Bruce to the nineties, the taste for auto- 
 biographical reminiscence grew steadily. ^ Logan's In 
 Autumn expresses the poet's sense of loss upon visiting 
 ''well known streams," "wonted groves," and "hospitable 
 hall." 
 
 My steps, when innocent and young, 
 
 These fairy paths pursued ; 
 And, wandering o'er the wild, I sung 
 
 My fancies to the wood. 
 
 As a child he wept tenderly over "imaged woes," little know- 
 ing that "real life" was itself a "tragic tale." As he 
 wanders among familiar scenes he hears no voice hailing 
 "A stranger to his native bowers." 
 
 Companions of the youthful scene, 
 
 Endeared from earHest days ! 
 With whom I sported on the green, 
 
 Or roved the woodland maze! 
 Long-exiled from your native clime, 
 Or by the thunder-stroke of Time 
 
 Snatched to the shadows of despair; 
 I hear your voices in the wind. 
 
 Your forms in every walk I find, 
 I stretch my arms : ye vanish into air ! 
 
 In an early poem. The Retrospect (1796), Southey ex- 
 presses the utter loneliness of the mature man in scenes 
 which were familiar in childhood, and among which he had 
 hoped to realize again the pleasure and friendship of school- 
 days. Memory's "busy eye" had often reconstructed 
 
 Each little vestige of the well-known place; 
 Each wonted haunt and scene of youthful joy, 
 Where merriment had cheered the careless boy; 
 
 1 Although Wordsworth's choice of subject in The Prelude may 
 have been influenced by Rousseau's Confessions, it is not necessary 
 to take that book into account here, as the native development in 
 poetry is clearly marked before the appearance of the Confessions. 
 
88 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Well pleased will fancy still the spot survey 
 Where once he triumphed in the boyish play, 
 Without one care where every morn he rose, 
 Where every evening sunk to calm repose. 
 
 Upon returning to familiar scenes, he finds that he is a 
 stranger : 
 
 Where whilom all were friends I stand alone, 
 Unknowing all I saw, of all I saw unknown. 
 
 On My Own Miniature Picture Taken at Tzvo Years of 
 Age (1796) develops the backv^ard look in a less sombre 
 vein. As he contemplates the miniature, Southey is re- 
 minded of the changes that have taken place in himself and 
 his friends. Was he once like the picture? Were the 
 glowing cheeks, the pleasure-sparkling eyes, and the smooth 
 brow really his? Years have wrought a strange alteration. 
 
 Of the friends 
 Who once so dearly prized this miniature, 
 And loved it for its likeness, some are gone 
 To their last home; and some, estranged in heart. 
 Beholding me, with quick-averted glance 
 Pass on the other side. 
 
 The elegiac strain was developed by Lamb in The Old 
 Familiar Faces (1798) in a mood of restrospective regret 
 stimulated by poignant grief that excluded classicalities and 
 also whimsical lines like those of Thomas Hood in *T re- 
 member, I remember." Lamb mourns the loss of more 
 than one friend: 
 
 I have had playmates, I have had companions, 
 
 In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays — 
 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 He loved the fairest among women, but 
 
 Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her. 
 
THE GROWING BOY 89 
 
 Although he may still laugh and carouse with his bosom 
 cronies, he must continue to pace ghost-like the haunts of 
 his childhood, and think of his friends how 
 
 Some they have died, and some they have left me, 
 And some are taken from me ; all are departed ; 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 In Wordsworth's lines on his school companion who 
 "Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls," local feeling is 
 stronger than that of severed friendship. ^ 
 
 Swift, who was willing to tolerate praise of the elegance 
 and wit of France and Italy, would have had scant sym- 
 pathy with modern sentimental journeys to the homes of 
 English men of letters. Yet long before the close of the 
 century Scott of Amwell's interest in Collins prompted 
 a journey to Chichester to find the grave of the poet. In 
 the year of Swift's death, Akenside in the Ode to the Muse 
 recalls his early days when the muse set him aglow with 
 prophetic heat which he no longer feels. 
 
 Where all the bright mysterious dreams 
 
 Of haunted groves and tuneful streams, 
 
 That woo'd my genius to divinest themes? 
 
 He asks for a free poetic hour among the duties which 
 promise him fame as a physician. As he writes, he feels 
 himself again possessed by the spirit of poetry, and his 
 bosom burns. 
 
 Such on the banks of Tyne, confessed, 
 
 I hailed the fair immortal guest. 
 
 When first she sealed me for her own. 
 
 In less than a year after Swift's death, Collins published 
 the Ode to Pity (1746), in which he sentimentally notices 
 the birthplace of Otway by the river Arun. In this poem 
 Collins has in fact voiced those emotions which, in their 
 
 1 The Prelude, Book III. 
 
90 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 association with the poet's recollection of his own birth- 
 place and boyhood days, are an essential element in the 
 specifically romantic feeling for native fields. (Collins im- 
 plores Pity to receive his humble strains in the name of 
 Euripides, who composed his tragedies by the side of distant 
 Ilissus. Then he wonders why he should find it necessary 
 to roam in fancy by the side of that deserted stream: 
 his native Arun has heard the plaints of a poet. 
 
 Wild Arun, too, has heard thy strains, 
 And echo, 'midst my native plains, 
 Been soothed by pity's lute. 
 
 There first the wren thy myrtles shed 
 On gentlest Otway's infant head, 
 
 To him thy cell was shown; 
 And while he sung the female heart, 
 With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art, 
 
 Thy turtles mixed their own. 
 
 The susceptible Lovibond responded to this motive in 
 Verses zvritten after passing through Findon, Sussex, iy68. 
 Findon was the birthplace of his teacher, the Rev. Mr. 
 Woodeson. 
 
 Woodeson! these eyes have seen thy natal earth, 
 Thy Findon, sloping from the southern downs; 
 Have blessed the roof ennobled by thy birth. 
 
 Emotional recollection of the poet's birthplace is most 
 frequently attached to childhood love of rivers and streams. 
 The transitional poets were especially susceptible to running 
 water, and Wordsworth's recollections of his own childhood 
 are indissolubly associated with the lakes and streams of 
 Lancashire and Westmoreland. ^ 
 
 1 Coleridge's The Brook was to have traced one of the Quan- 
 tock streams from its source to its mouth in the Bristol Channel. 
 The notes and maps made by Coleridge subjected him to annoyance 
 from agents of the British government, who suspected that he was 
 
THE GROWING BOY 91 
 
 Thomas Warton's charming sonnet To the River Lodon 
 foreshadows Wordsworth in that Warton reveals attachment 
 to the river with which he had been familiar in early child- 
 hood. He recalls the banks of Lodon as fairy ground; it 
 was there that his muse first lisped. In his memory the 
 stream has become idealized through association with the 
 pleasures of childhood ; nowhere has he found skies and sun 
 so pure as near his sweet native stream.^ Langhorne apos- 
 trophizes the Tweed as the favored stream on the banks of 
 which Thomson gathered flowers in childhood. Although the 
 early poets did not amplify their recollection to the extent of 
 Wordsworth in The Prelude and other poems like the Dud- 
 don sonnets, they were nevertheless prone to recall the 
 first exercise of the poetic faculty in connection with their 
 rovings in the meadows or woodlands by the side of a 
 stream. Mason takes this lead so frequently that the 
 reader tires of constant reminders of his wanderings on the 
 banks of his favorite stream, a tributary of the Humber. 
 
 making topographical memoranda of military value to the French. 
 (Is there, possibly, a connection between the interest in childhood 
 and the fondness for "sources" and "springs" and "fountains"?) — 
 Compare also Collins's Ode on the Popular Superstitions: 
 
 Ye splendid friths and lakes, which, far away. 
 
 Are by smooth Annan filled or pastoral Tay, 
 
 Or Don's romantic springs, at distance hail. 
 
 Compare also, Samuel Marsh Oram's To the River Stour, 
 "Where Fielding oft musing delighted to rove." 
 
 1 J. G. Cooper recalls how he wandered as an infant by Trent's 
 "pellucid streams." On his sick-bed Smollett reverted in thought 
 to his native Leven-water : 
 
 Pure stream! in whose transparent wave 
 
 My youthful limbs I wont to lave. 
 
 No torrents stain thy hmpid source; 
 
 No rocks impede thy dimpling course, 
 
 That sweetly warbles o'er its bed. 
 
92 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Langhoriie and Bruce reveal special fondness for native 
 streams/ John Langhorne was born at Kirkby Stephen in 
 1735, and was first sent to a school at Winton, in Westmore- 
 land, and later to one at Appleby, until the age of eighteen. 
 He was thus brought under the influence of the same na- 
 tural scenery as Wordsworth. In the closing stanza of his 
 lines to the Genius of Westmoreland he dedicates, while in 
 his native shades retired, his votive lay to the spirit which 
 had stimulated his youthful endeavors, and from which he 
 had caught the sacred fire. It was none other than the 
 '^hidden power of these wild groves." As early as 1759 
 he added to the numerous detached poems dedicated to 
 rivers, his address To the River Eden. Though thickly 
 overlaid with "diction" and classicist embellishments, true 
 feeling is suggested in the opening stanzas, addressed to 
 Delightful Eden ! parent stream ! 
 
 In a pastoral vein he mourns lost love and friendship, but 
 says that 
 
 'Tis yet some joy to think of thee. 
 
 He too had strayed pensively along the "mazy shore," and 
 would paint those scenes again where he had played with 
 infant joy. Although Langhorne often echoes Thomson, 
 he could be as definite as Wordsworth in recalling specific 
 locality. 
 
 A Fareufell Hymn to the Valley of Invan indicates the 
 extent to which Langhorne had freed himself from classicist 
 vocabulary. Although he is obviously inspired by romantic 
 emotions, his expression is not always, to the same extent as 
 in this hymn, characteristic of the freer vocabulary of later 
 writers. In this poem (which in its mood may be con- 
 
 ^ Wordsworth believed that Langhorne's poetry was not held 
 in as high esteem as it should be (K. Lienemann, Die Belesenheit 
 von William Wordsivorth. BerHn, 1908, p. 91). 
 
THE GROWING BOY 93 
 
 sidered to suggest Wordsworth's farewell to his native re- 
 gions) he succeeds in phrasing his thought without classi- 
 cal embellishment. Like Bruce he has come under the 
 influence of Collins and Gray in his love for the hour of 
 twilight, which was favorable to sentimental musings. But 
 at the same time he also provides an early parallel for 
 Wordsworth's loving recollection of spots endeared to him 
 in childhood. His musings had led him through the fields 
 of Irwan's vale, where he listened to the song of the black- 
 bird. He must now bewail the loss of these pleasures. 
 Like Wordsworth, although without his power of expres- 
 sion, he will prize the memory of his experiences. 
 
 Yet still, within yon vacant grove, 
 
 To mark the close of parting day; 
 Along yon flow'ry banks to rove, 
 
 And watch the wave that winds away; 
 Fair Fancy sure shall never fail, 
 Tho' far from these, and Irwan's vale ! 
 
 Although Bruce sings of many streams, he does so with 
 special delight of his native Gairney. Michael Bruce was 
 born in 1746 in a little hamlet on the banks of Lochleven in 
 Kinrossshire. In Lochleven (1766) he set out to record 
 
 the dear remembrance of his native fields 
 
 before a slow disease carried him ofif at the age of twenty- 
 one as one of the minor inheritors of unfulfilled renown. 
 Like other transition poets, the sensitive Bruce pointed the 
 way for the early and late romantic poets who were pre- 
 occupied with the expression of their love of external na- 
 ture. His desire was to make immortal the rivers of his 
 youth; they shall flow "in thy poet's lays." Beauty dwells 
 ever-blooming on the banks of Leven ; and he first tuned 
 his Doric reed on the banks of the sweetly-winding Gairney. 
 His twilight musings were probably stimulated by the 
 
94 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 ''sweet-complaining" Gray ; and his debt to Thomson is clear 
 in his lofty conception of divine joy and goodness in external 
 nature. He recognizes an omnipresent creator who is 
 
 Ever present through the peopled space 
 
 Of vast Creation's infinite extent, 
 
 Pours life, and bliss, and beauty, pours Himself, 
 
 His own essential goodness, o'er the minds 
 
 Of happy beings, thro' ten thousand worlds. 
 
 Bruce's lines, which lead into his address to his childhood 
 friend Lelius, indicate that Wordsworth was the crown of a 
 development that linked the recollection of childhood with 
 the infinite goodness and powers of the universe. ^ 
 
 Nearly forty years before The Prelude, Bruce wrote in 
 Lochleven an autobiographical poem that suggests a loving 
 remembrance of childhood days among beautiful natural 
 surroundings. The typical descriptions of Thomson have 
 given way to the personal point of view ; Bruce has defi- 
 nitely connected external nature with the individual exper- 
 ience. 
 
 Still as I mount, the less'ning hills decline. 
 
 Till high above them northern Grampius lifts 
 
 His hoary head, bending beneath a load 
 
 Of everlasting snow. O'er southern fields 
 
 I see the Cheviot hills. . . . 
 
 But chief mine eye on the subjected vale 
 
 Of Leven pleased looks down. 
 
 Although Akenside's Ode to the Muse (1745) contains 
 perhaps the earliest extended personal recollection of native 
 fields, the romantic longing to be again a child does not 
 appear in the earlier form of his Pleasures of the Imagina- 
 
 1 Wordsworth possessed Bruce's poems as collected by Ander- 
 son. Dorothy read Lochleven in 1801. Wordsworth wished to see 
 a monument erected on the banks of Lochleven, "to the memory of 
 the innocent and tender-hearted Michael Bruce." (Lienemann, op. 
 cit, p. 165.) 
 
THE GROWING BOY 95 
 
 Hon. The growth of sentiment during the intervening years 
 is reflected in the revised form of this poem. In the 
 uncompleted fourth book of the revised version (1770), 
 where Akenside set himself the task of exploring the secret 
 paths of early genius, he wonders where youthful poets 
 now invoke the muse, and associates them at once with 
 rivers. 
 
 What wild river's brink at eve 
 
 Imprint your steps? 
 
 This thought stimulated the wish that he might again as in 
 his youth be with them. 
 
 — -Would I again were with you! — O ye dales 
 Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands; where 
 Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides, 
 And his banks open, and his lawns extend. 
 Stops short the pleased traveler to view. 
 * 
 
 ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook 
 The rocky pavement and the mossy falls 
 Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream ; 
 How gladly I recall your well-known seats 
 Beloved of old, and that delightful time 
 When all alone, for many a summer's day, 
 
 1 wandered through your calm recesses, led 
 In silence by some powerful hand unseen! 
 
 In the poet's notice of the activities of the growing boy, 
 there is a change, then, from generalized recollection to 
 Akenside's extended treatment, and to Southey's well- 
 defined autobiographical attitude toward early childhood. 
 In Akenside's apostrophe to the Wensbeck and the dales 
 of Tyne, which suggests definitely the rhythm and mood of 
 Wordsworth, there is no longer mere juxtaposition of mood 
 and incident, but instead a fusion of both elements. The way 
 has been clearly marked for Wordsworth's mood in the 
 poem which in the chronological arrangement of his poems 
 
96 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 appears as the first. It is the conclusion of the poem he 
 wrote in 1786 in anticipation of leaving Hawkeshead with 
 the vale of Esthwaite and his native regions. In these 
 youthful lines he clearly foreshadows the mood of The Pre- 
 lude. He feels with fervid emotion, 
 
 That, wheresoe'er my steps may tend. 
 And whensoever my course shall end, 
 If in that hour a single tie 
 Survive of local sympathy, 
 My soul will cast the backward view, 
 The longing look alone on you. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 The extent to which poets had prepared the way for 
 Wordsworth's recollection of his own childhood is evident 
 in their sentiment for native fields. Another manifestation 
 of Wordsworth's profound interest in childhood appears in 
 his constructive suggestions for ameliorating the condition 
 of the children of the poor. The influences which helped to 
 shape his views are felt in poetry as early as Thomson's 
 Seasons. 
 
 Constant repetition of the difference between the man- 
 made city and the God-given beauty of the country reveals 
 an ethical concept of increasing power in eighteenth-cen- 
 tury poetry. In the contrast, city life is always unfavorably 
 depicted: natural man has no opportunity to realize himself 
 under artificial conditions of city life. ^ This attitude can 
 be understood in the light of philosophical tendencies that 
 influenced poets. Hobbes had developed a philosophy which 
 asserted that man is by nature selfish, and that compassion 
 is a sign of weakness. To curb this selfishness of the in- 
 dividual he had advocated a strong central government. 
 The new stimulus felt by poets with whose work this study 
 is concerned, derived not from the egoistic philosophy of 
 Hobbes or the orthodox teachings of the church on 
 original sin, which emphasized the imperfections of na- 
 tural man, but from the philosophy of the Earl of Shaftes- 
 
 1 Compare Thomson's early poem Of a Country Life, begin- 
 ning, 
 
 I hate the clamours of the smoky towns. 
 See also Nathaniel Cotton's The Fireside. 
 
^5 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 bury, who asserted the doctrine of natural goodness/ 
 Thomson's harmony of all created beings derives from 
 Shaftesbury's identification of the good and the beautiful. 
 In this conception God, who is held to be sufficiently re- 
 vealed in natural phenomena, is the embodiment of good- 
 ness ; he is the spirit of love, in which is implied benevolence 
 towards man, whom he created for happiness. Compassion, 
 therefore, is not a weakness, but a virtue ; for if man is by 
 nature a virtuous being, he must respect his fellow man and 
 promote his happiness. To lack compassion is to be out of 
 harmony with nature, which is beautiful. The essence of 
 Shaftesbury's philosophy in those ethical aspects which are 
 especially to be noted in the poetry with which the following 
 paragraphs are concerned, is that the benevolent impulses 
 of natural man are spontaneous and instinctive. 
 
 To Shaftesbury may be traced the vigorous interest in 
 philanthropy which animates the poetry of the century.^ 
 His emphasis on the social affections stimulated poets. Al- 
 though it has been said that Englishmen were deeply inter- 
 ested in abolishing negro slave traffic at the very time when 
 women and, especially, children were condemned to indus- 
 trial slavery, it must be remembered that those poets who 
 used benevolence as their slogan were a mighty force in the 
 awakening of social consciousness, the results of which 
 were remedial measures and legislation by which children 
 benefited. Mandeville's coarse attack on Shaftesbury's 
 Characteristics had emphasized the repulsive features of the 
 philosophy of Hobbes. The cynicism of the pessimistic 
 Mandeville went so far as to question the right of children 
 
 ^ Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. (1711). 
 
 2 Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760, 
 by C. A. Moore. Publications of the Modern Language Asso- 
 ciation of America, 1916. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 99 
 
 of the poor to what Httle education had been provided for 
 them in charity schools during the reign of Queen Anne. 
 Poets did not follow Mandeville. It is clear, however, that 
 native influences determined their interest in benevolence 
 before Rousseau added his strength to their cause after 
 1760. ^ In fact, even before the middle of the century, 
 preoccupation with ethical problems amounts almost to 
 a convention. The readiness with which poets responded 
 to benevolence is to be explained, furthermore, on the basis 
 of social conditions. Luxury had been on the increase 
 even before 1763, when England definitely took its place as 
 the first power among nations. The industrial revolution 
 increased poverty and unrest among the masses. A new 
 age was coming into being, and sensitive poets reflected the 
 pains of the new birth. Their sensibilities were aroused by 
 wrongs which they saw in the social readjustment. 
 
 The extent of their interest in universal benevolence is 
 manifested in sympathetic notice of orphans, and in at- 
 tacks on luxury and deplorable conditions attributed to the 
 rise of industry. But before they awakened to practical 
 problems, poets had been sensitive to the abuse of animals. 
 In fact, before 1750, poets had awakened more fully to 
 abuses of birds and animals than to hardships of children of 
 the poor. It will be necessary, therefore, to note first of all 
 how sympathy for children was closely bound up with 
 compassion for animals. 
 
 1 Shaftesbury's influence continued strong up to the time of 
 the Revolution. When, however, the democratic implications of his 
 philosophy became obvious in the audacious presentation of Rousseau 
 and Paine, and in the events of the Revolution itself, his popularity 
 at once declined. Eleven editions of the Characteristics appeared 
 between 171 1 and 1790, but after 1790 no new edition appeared until 
 1870. (Characteristics, edited by John M. Robertson, 2 vols., Lon- 
 don, 1900J 
 
100 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 I 
 
 Thomson and those who like him exalted rural simplicity 
 at the expense of city manners, found congenial matter in 
 animal life. Unlike animals, man had under the baneful 
 influence of artificial society drifted far from his natural self. 
 His instincts had become dulled to such an extent that, for 
 instance, he neglected even his offspring in order to satisfy 
 a craving for luxury and pleasure. He prefers smoky 
 cities and palaces to sheltering groves, warm caves, and 
 deep-sunk valleys. ^ God's forests stand neglected for the 
 comforts of civilization. In Fdshion, Joseph Warton 
 scorns artificial pleasures : the fashionable woman has lost 
 sight of natural instincts. Warton would lead her to imi- 
 tate the loyalty of animals to their young. At ten in the 
 morning the fashionable woman drinks chocolate and strokes 
 Fop, her lap dog ; - she rises at noon, and after an elaborate 
 toilette dines at three. 
 
 Meanwhile her babes with some foul nurse remain ; 
 
 For modern dames a mother's cares disdain; 
 
 Each fortnight once she bears to see the brats, 
 
 Tor oh! they stun one's ears like squalling cats.' 
 
 Tigers and pards protect and nurse their young, 
 
 The parent snake will roll her forked tongue, 
 
 The vulture hovers vengeful o'er her nest, 
 
 If the rude hand her helpless brood infest; 
 
 Shall lovely woman, softest frame of heaven, 
 
 To whom were tears and feeling pity given, 
 
 Most fashionably cruel, less regard 
 
 Her offspring than the vulture, snake, and pard? 
 
 1 J, Warton: The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature (1740). 
 
 2 Compare Somerville's The Chase (1735) : 
 
 the rustic dames 
 Shall at thy kennel wait, and in their laps 
 Receive thy growing hopes, with many a kiss 
 Caress, and dignify their little charge 
 With some great title. . . . 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 101 
 
 Isaac Watts distinguishes between children who are sin- 
 ful, and animals that reflect the glory of God. It is not in 
 itself significant that the emmet and bee are held up as 
 models, because Watts's purpose is didactic ; but plants and 
 animals are also referred to as containing the essence of 
 their maker's goodness, which children are taught to see 
 in nature. Watts can see beauty and goodness everywhere 
 except in the heart of the child, between whom and external 
 nature he recognizes a breach. In Address to the Deity he 
 is unable to think of man as part of the beauty of the created 
 universe ; yet 
 
 Beast and birds with laboring throats 
 Teach us a God in thousand notes. 
 
 Watts seems in fact to be groping for a religious mood 
 that shall, like the sentimental contemplation of romantic 
 poets, mysteriously reveal God through the heart. Because 
 of the inhibition which the doctrine of natural depravity puts 
 upon him, he is unable to complete the circle. The result 
 is a cleavage between the child and the beauties of nature 
 that are lauded in Praise for Creation and Providence 
 (1720). Against Pride in Clothes strikes the balance 
 against the child, whom Watts does not make a partaker in 
 the goodness and beauty of nature. The child is made 
 to say, 
 
 The tulip and the butterfly 
 
 Appear in gayer coats than I; 
 
 Let me be dressed fine as I will, 
 
 Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still. ^ 
 
 Humanitarian conceptions find no place in Somer- 
 ville's The Chase, which voices the traditional sentiment of 
 
 1 Cp. Cotton's The Beau and the Viper: 
 What if I show that only man 
 Appears defective in the plan ! 
 
102 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 country gentlemen who believe that animals were created 
 for man, and that he is their master.^ 
 
 Thomson, on the other hand, disapproves of the hunt be- 
 cause it wantonly interferes with the happiness to which all 
 created beings are entitled. In Winter he notices the hunter 
 only to condemn him. Helpless birds merit the protection 
 of man. When the spirit of universal benevolence is mani- 
 fest in nature in early spring, birds are the first to sing of 
 love. Even birds whose note is harsh and discordant when 
 heard alone — like the jays, rooks, and daws — ^merge har- 
 moniously into the chorus of song. Thomson lovingly 
 names over the list of romantic birds, and in terms of do- 
 mestic life describes their mating, nesting, and raising of 
 the young. He does not omit to focus his lines on the self- 
 sacrifice of parent birds who unselfishly bear the most de- 
 licious morsels to their nestlings ; and he brings home the 
 humanitarian thesis in the closing illustration of poverty- 
 stricken cottagers who check their appetites to give their 
 children food.- 
 
 1 The brute creation are his property, 
 Subservient to his will, and for him made : 
 As hurtful these he kills, as useful those 
 Preserves; their sole and arbitrary king. 
 
 (The Chase, Book IV) 
 
 2 Yet in the episode of the starved Pyrennean wolves that 
 scour the countryside, Thomson recognizes the ferocity of animals 
 bent on prey: 
 
 Rapacious, at the mother's throat they fly. 
 And tear the screaming infant from her breast. 
 Although protesting against man's cruelty, later poets are not blind 
 to the cruelty of nature. In Sensibility, Burns hears 
 the woodlark charm the forest, 
 
 Telling o'er his little joys; 
 But alas! a prey the surest 
 
 To each pirate of the skies. (Continued) 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 103 
 
 Smollett's satire bears witness to widespread sympathy 
 for animals. Before the influence of Rousseau had been 
 felt, Smollett had burlesqued Lyttleton's Monody (1747). 
 His Burlesque Ode failed, however, to stem the ever in- 
 creasing tide of sentimental tears. To ascribe Shaw's 
 Monody (1768) and Ode to the Nightingale (1771) wholly 
 to the influence of Rousseau is to ignore the persistent na- 
 tive influence of Shaftesbury and Thomson, and the direct 
 connection which Shaw himself establishes between his 
 poems and the Monody of Lyttleton. ^ 
 
 Lovibond brings native benevolist teachings definitely 
 into connection with childhood. In Rural Sports he casti- 
 gates man for lack of feeling towards animals, and then 
 points to children who lure barnyard fowl only to feed them. 
 In the fresh sunshine of early morning all creation swells 
 the chorus of delight and love. Not so with those who 
 wreak havoc by cheering the baying pack. Lovibond has 
 visions of the unity of man and animal creation ("For con- 
 cord, for the harmonious whole") that was to stir Coleridge 
 and Wordsworth. He is not content to rest in a negative 
 
 The image of the hawk as the enemy of domestic happiness 
 is used again in Bonie Jean and How Cruel are the Parents. 
 Mason's English Garden has an interesting passage that shows how 
 the hawk preys upon the mother bird. Mason thinks back to the 
 golden age when the law of tooth and claw did not prevail. Scott 
 faced unpalatable facts in Approach of Winter: 
 
 Who dreams of Nature, free from Nature's strife? 
 
 Who dreams of constant happiness below? 
 The hope-flushed enterer on the stage of life; 
 The youth to knowledge unchastised by woe. 
 
 1 Although Henry Brooke's Universal Beauty (1735) does not 
 notice childhood, Brooke's appeal for universal harmony, and his 
 praise of insects, together with moral lessons that he derives from 
 animal life, suggest the attitude of J. Warton, whose comparison 
 between animals and man is unfavorable to man. 
 
104 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 attitude of condemnation, but asks man to observe the 
 instinctive humanity of children: 
 
 beneath thy porch, in social joy 
 Sit and approve thy infant's virtuous haste, 
 Humanity's sweet tones while all employ 
 To lure the winged domestics to repast. 
 
 The parent should learn from his children to avoid wan- 
 ton killing of God's creatures, and instead 
 
 Let Heaven's best joy be thine, benevolence. 
 The closing lines foreshadow the moral of Coleridge's stan- 
 zas in The Ancient Mariner, in which the later poet moral- 
 izes the experience of the sailor who had violated the law 
 of love that permeates the universe. Lovibond teaches that 
 it is God's decree, instinctively obeyed by children, 
 
 To spare thy own, nor shed another's blood: 
 Heaven breathes benevolence, to all, to thee; 
 Each being's bliss consummates general good. 
 
 The significance of Rural Sports lies in its use of children 
 to represent the ideal state to which man must aspire if he 
 wishes to live according to the laws of nature. 
 
 Where Lovibond held up the farmer's children as an 
 ideal of benevolence, Beattie's Minstrel (1771) definitely 
 portrays in Edwin an individual child who responds to the 
 ideals of sentimental humanitarianism. 
 
 His heart, from cruel sport estranged, would bleed 
 To work the woe of any living thing. 
 By trap, or net, by arrow or by sling; 
 These he detested ; those he scorned to wield : 
 He wished to be the guardian, not the king, 
 Tyrant far less, or traitor of the field ; 
 And sure the silvan reign unbloody joy might yield. 
 
 In Beattie the change from Somerville's conception of man 
 as the sole and arbitrary king to the sentimental view of 
 man as the guardian, indicates the difference between two 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 105 
 
 outlooks on life. In the poetic treatment of children it in- 
 dicates the triumph of Shaftesbury's teachings of universal 
 benevolence. ^ 
 
 Burns, Cowper, and Southey, of the later group of poets, 
 were alive to the sufferings of animals. In his lines To a 
 Mouse, Burns talks to the field mouse as tenderly as he 
 would to a hurt child, and mourns over the fact that man 
 has broken natural ties. In The Wounded Hare he in- 
 vokes a curse upon the man who hunts hares during the 
 breeding season. Among the passages that condemn the 
 hunter of wild animals, this is one of the most vigorous. 
 Burns's letter to Cunningham reveals the sincerity of his 
 indignation.^ He develops the motive in terms of domestic 
 Hfe: 
 
 Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe; 
 The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side; 
 Ah ! helpless nurslings, who will now provide 
 
 That life a mother only can bestow ! 
 
 ^ Compare Thomas Blacklock, one of the chief benevolists, who 
 banished the hunt from the neighborhood of his cottage, and wished 
 to trace "Kind Nature's laws with sacred Ashley." Cp. Bruce's 
 Elegy to Spring: 
 
 Thus Ashley gathered Academic bays; 
 
 Thus gentle Thomson as the Seasons roll, . . . 
 But contrast the boy in Robert Bedingfield's The Education of 
 Achilles, who was accustomed "To grasp with tender hand the 
 pointed spear." 
 
 2 "One morning lately, as I was out pretty early in the fields, 
 sowing some grass-seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a 
 neighboring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare 
 came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the in- 
 human fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of 
 them have young ones. Indeed, there is something in this business 
 of destroying, for our sport, individuals in the animal creation that 
 do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas 
 of virtue." 
 
106 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Cowper's defense of animals reflects the humanitarian 
 implications of the evangelical revival. He pleads for the 
 protection of bird and beast, not on the basis of natural good- 
 ness, but because he is prompted by Christian sympathy with 
 the helpless. So he arrives by a different route at the same 
 goal as those who follow Shaftesbury. Cowper's nature is 
 so sensitive to abuse of animals, that he Observed with pain 
 how a neighbor's children played with a pet leveret about 
 three months old. As they understood "better how to 
 tease the poor creature than to feed it," the poet received 
 their father's consent to take it under his protection. 
 
 The humanitarian thesis was uppermost in the mind 
 of Southey, even when he expressed his personal attach- 
 ment to the dog that had been the friend of his childhood. 
 In the lines On the Death of a Favorite Old Spaniel, Southey 
 lingers over recollections of childhood days spent in play 
 with ''poor Phyllis." He writes with simple tenderness of 
 his personal loss. 
 
 thou hadst been 
 Still the companion of my boyish sports; 
 And, as I roamed o'er Avon's wooded cliffs, 
 From many a day-dream has thy short, quick bark 
 Recalled my wandering soul. I have beguiled 
 Often the melancholy hours at school, 
 Soured by some little tyrant, with the thought 
 Of distant home, and I remembered then 
 Thy faithful fondness; for not mean the joy. 
 Returning at the happy holidays, 
 I felt from thy dumb welcome. ^ 
 
 When the gate last closed upon Southey as he left his pater- 
 nal roof, Phyllis lost her truest friend, and no one was left 
 to plead 
 
 For the old age of brute fidelity. 
 
 1 Compare Thomson's juvenile poem on his favorite sister 
 and her cat : Lisy's Parting with her Cat. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 107 
 
 The closing lines of this early poem reveal the revolu- 
 tionary and antagonistic Southey who had not yet found 
 himself in the conservative spirit which lay at the root of his 
 character and which dominated his later life. His plea for 
 animals is in harmony with that of the benevolists. 
 
 Mine is no narrow creed; 
 And He who gave thee being did not frame 
 The mystery of life to be the sport 
 Of merciless Man. There is another world 
 For all that live and move, — a better one, 
 Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine 
 INFINITE GOODNESS to the little bounds 
 Of their own charity, may envy thee. 
 
 Southey's heart, to use his own words, has a genuine warmth, 
 though it smokes not ; his feelings are not mushroom feel- 
 ings that spring up without seed and take no root. As a 
 result, although he can not abandon himself to the spirit 
 of universal benevolence as it has been observed in the 
 poets who preceded him, he is apparently in full sympathy 
 with their teachings.^ 
 
 If the poet's escape from city to country seems like 
 a weak or even selfish shrinking from responsibility, it must 
 be remembered that before men were able to face the prob- 
 lems of practical reform, their hearts had to be attuned to 
 the sorrows of man and, especially, of animals, the sympa- 
 
 1 Cp. Day's Sandford and Mertoun: "I believe, as I have before 
 told you, there is no animal that may not be rendered mild and in- 
 offensive by good usage." (I, 236) Thomas Day undertook to 
 ride an unbroken colt, and was killed for his pains. — It has been the 
 custom to point to Day's Sandford and Mertoun as an example of 
 Rousseau's direct influence on English thought. After a careful 
 examination, however, Jacques Pons concludes that Day has not 
 held to the fundamentals of Rousseau's teachings, and that we are 
 not justified in calling his book "The Little Emile" or "The 
 English Emile." 
 
108 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 thetic observation of which was nursed in an environment 
 favorable to the mood of universal benevolence. The poet's 
 convictions were strengthened in remote hamlets from which 
 as a vantage point the new message was sent to men who 
 were moved to attempt practical reforms on individual 
 initiative or through the agency of an organized institution 
 like the church, or societies that grow out of church ac- 
 tivities. Poets had to contend not only with conditions, but 
 also with a state of mind that was responsible for those con- 
 ditions. They fled from both when they left the city, but 
 their message came back to city dwellers, many of whom 
 were in the state of mind illustrated in the cynical letter of 
 Lovelace to Bedford : "We begin, when boys, with birds ; 
 and when grown up, go on to women ; and both, perhaps, 
 in turn, experience our sportive cruelty." ^ If men were 
 to be aroused to sympathy with the suffering of children, 
 they had first to be awakened to a realization that kindness 
 and love pervade all nature — even the nature which Somer- 
 ville held to have been created for the sport of man. Poets, 
 who were the earliest to awaken to a heartfelt brotherhood 
 with animals, longed for the solitary places where cruelty 
 and cynicism could not operate. It was the simple, feeling 
 poet, nursed in solitude, who was destined to win men's 
 hearts to consent to accept the spirit of benevolence as the 
 moving force even in organized society. After the awaken- 
 ing, men were ready, toward the close of the century, for 
 practical reforms. 
 
 II 
 Readers of poetry in the eighteenth century must have 
 responded to passages on childhood that now seem cold and 
 conventional. In Prospect of Peace, Tickell writes of Bri- 
 tain's heroes, 
 
 1 Clarissa Harlowe. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 109 
 
 At whose dire names ten thousand widows pressed 
 Their helpless orphans clinging to the breast. 
 
 The image of the widow and her orphans survives lustily 
 in benevolist poetry. Although it is difficult for the modern 
 reader to feel the emotional stimulus which the poet un- 
 doubtedly intended, the lines on widows and orphans must 
 have suggested a coloring of sentiment that moved tears 
 and a just indignation against social wrongs.^ Those poets 
 who felt social injustice, constantly employ traditional 
 phrases in lines that are obviously meant to arouse com- 
 passion. ^ Joseph Warton in Library calls upon his readers 
 to "hark, how dying infants shriek." Scott in Recruiting 
 "hates that drum's discordant sound," which suggests only 
 burning towns and widows' tears and orphans' moans. 
 
 Childhood in William Whitehead's Elegy written at the 
 convent of Haut Fillers in Champagne, 1/34, is more vital- 
 ly conceived than in Lovibond's Ode to Youth, J. Warton's 
 The Revenge of America, or Graeme's Loss of the Aurora. 
 On the banks of the Marne, the workman often recalls dis- 
 astrous days when makers of war taught Christian zeal to 
 authorize their crimes : 
 
 Oft to his children sportive on the grass 
 Does dreadful tales of worn tradition tell. 
 
 1 Beilby Porteus's Death portrays such crashing ruin and de- 
 vastation that there is 
 
 not even a widow left 
 To wail her sons. 
 
 2 In like manner children are introduced in tragedy to heighten 
 effect, as in Southerne's The Fatal Marriage, or The Innocent Adul- 
 tery, and Oroonoko. In Home's Douglas the child appears on the 
 stage to speak those appealing lines which long served in the schools 
 as a favorite piece for declamation : 
 
 My name is Norval : on the Grampian hills, 
 My father feeds his flocks. . . . 
 
110 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Although Smollett's Tears of Scotland (1746) was con- 
 ceived in horror of atrocities, the lines seem cold and con- 
 ventional to the modern reader. Yet in its day the poem 
 must have evoked tears through portrayal of the misfor- 
 tunes of the poor. The wretched man who from afar sees 
 his property destroyed by armies, ''Bethinks him of his babes 
 and wife," and curses his fate. Infants perish in the field, 
 and a parent who is driven to distraction sheds his children's 
 blood. A mother who hears her helpless orphans cry for 
 bread, 
 
 Weeps o'er her tender babes and dies. 
 
 Although Gay had observed slum children in London, 
 he did not develop the humanitarian aspects of his material 
 in the mood of Thomson and later poets. His treatment of 
 London waifs has only a suggestion of the pathetic ele- 
 ment which is prominent in Steele's sentimental sketches in 
 the Tatler. The new ideal is expressed in Thomson's lines 
 on Shaftesbury, who is 
 
 The generous Ashley thine, the friend of man; 
 Who scanned his nature with a brother's eye, 
 His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim, 
 To touch the finer movements of the mind. 
 And with the moral beauty charm the heart. ^ 
 
 Thomson, as a result, portrays conditions that add 
 hardship to the sufferings of children. In the episode of 
 the rider and horse who while benighted are lost in the 
 bogs, the wife and ''plaintive children" vainly await the 
 father's return.- In another familiar passage in Winter 
 the father is overtaken by a snow-storm, and, "stung with 
 thoughts of home," flounders in the drifts. Horror fills 
 
 1 Summer. 
 
 2 Autumn. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 111 
 
 his heart when he reahzes that in place of being near his 
 ''tufted cottage rising through the snow," he is far from 
 the beaten track. As he sinks helpless into the drift, 
 thoughts of "tender anguish" overtake him. He thinks of 
 
 His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. 
 
 In vain for him the officious wife prepares 
 
 The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; 
 
 In vain his little children, peeping out 
 
 Into the mingling storm, demand their sire, 
 
 With tears of artless innocence. Alas! 
 
 Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold. . . . 
 
 Because he is awake to social wrongs, Thomson frankly 
 makes himself the poetic advocate of the unfortunate and 
 distressed by frequent and definite interest in charity. 'His 
 philosophy of universal benevolence awakens a keen reali- 
 zation that unassuming worth is neglected, and that the 
 good man's share is often gall and bitterness. He faces 
 the problem of 
 
 Why the lone widow and her orphans pined 
 In starving solitude; while luxury, 
 In palaces, lay straining her low thought. 
 To form unreal wants. 
 
 He is not wholly conventional in Lord Talbot when that 
 lord is praised for a love of justice that led him to cham- 
 pion ''trampled want and worth" and defend "suffering 
 right." His reward is the hig'hest tribute the helpless widow 
 and her orphans can give, "The widow's sighs and orphan's 
 tears" of gratitude. ^ 
 
 1 Compare Fawkes's On the Death of the Earl of Uxbridge 
 (1743). Blair in William Law praises the charitable work of Law 
 and his fellow workers at Kings Clyffe. The spirit of benevolence 
 is praised by Mackenzie in Man of the World: "their very errors 
 were delightful . . . they were the errors of benevolence, genero- 
 sity, and virtue." 
 
112 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 In the same mood Thomson hails the investigators on 
 the jail committee of 1729 as benefactors of mankind, and 
 calls upon them as true patriots to resume their work. He 
 can not forget the generous band who were ''touched by 
 human woe" to search the gloomy horrors of the jail, where, 
 it must be recalled, incarcerated men lived with wife and 
 children, as is clear from the Vicar of Wake-field. 
 
 Institutional life of children also receives his attention. 
 Among the blameless poor he does not overlook 
 
 The helpless young that kiss no mother's hand. 
 
 In Liberty he states his conception of the service to be ren- 
 dered by public institutions. Referring to the Foundling 
 Hospital, he arouses sympathy for the work of salvaging 
 orphans : 
 
 The dome resounding sweet with infant joy, 
 From famine saved, and cruel-handed shame. 
 
 If men will realize their natural duties, the tender-hearted 
 pedestrian need no longer be pained by the sights of want 
 and misery : 
 
 No agonizing infant, that ne'er earned 
 Its guiltless pangs 
 
 will be seen on London streets. Thomson is the first Eng- 
 lish poet who is wholly awakened to the sufferings endured 
 by children of those who eat the "bitter bread of misery" and 
 who shrink into the "sordid hut of cheerless poverty" 
 which is "pierced by wintry winds." ^ He endeavors to stir 
 the social consciousness of the wealthy. If the facts were 
 faced, vice in high places would stand appalled, and the 
 "heedless rambling impulse" would learn to think. The 
 
 ^ Compare Chatterton's Resignation for a description of an un- 
 sanitary cottage; and Crabbe's Village, Book I, 11. 260—267. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 113 
 
 heart of charity would be warmed if man would but pause 
 to consider the struggles of his less fortunate fellows: 
 "The social tear would rise, the social sigh." 
 
 Thomson had no fear that his ethical interest would "de- 
 form the splendor of his strain." A passage in Liberty 
 (V, 660—666) reveals his heartfelt sympathy with helpless 
 children. He notes the bounteous stores which Britain has 
 provided for orphans, and bursts into a fervid lyrical strain 
 over the good that will accrue to society from a wise con- 
 servation of childhood. If the distresses of older people are 
 relieved, it is their due ; but if the wards are children, they 
 will repay the "fondest care." 
 
 sweet 
 
 The morning shines in mercy's dews arrayed. 
 
 Lo ! how they rise ! these families of Heaven ! 
 
 That! chief, (but why — ye bigots! — why so late?) 
 
 Where blooms and warbles glad a rising age; 
 
 What smiles of praise ! and, while their song ascends, 
 
 The listening seraph lays his lute aside. 
 
 Although Thomson's deep interest in children's welfare 
 nmst have been stirred by recollections of hardship suffered 
 by his widowed mother in the care of her children, the 
 personal note is not heard in his lines. 
 
 Akenside and Collins write in the same mood. In Win- 
 ter Solstice (1740) Akenside, an ardent benevolist, contrasts 
 city and country life during a snow-storm. City folk are 
 dancing, singing, or are comfortable by a "splendid fire." 
 
 Meantime, perhaps, with tender fears, 
 Some village dame the curfew hears, 
 While round the hearth the children play : 
 At morn their father went abroad ; 
 The moon is sunk, and deep the road; 
 She sighs, and wonders at his stay. 
 
 With less reticence than Akenside, Collins in Ode on Popu- 
 lar Superstitions develops the episode of the shepherd who. 
 
114 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 bewildered in the fens, was drowned far from his flocks and 
 cottage : 
 
 For him in vain his anxious wife shall wait, 
 Or wander forth to meet him on his way ; 
 For him in vain at to-fall of the day, 
 His babes shall linger at the unclosing gate. 
 
 The poetry of Richard Savage is interesting in that it 
 supplements Thomson's generalized appeal for universal 
 benevolence by occasionally breaking through the restraint 
 which literary conventions laid upon poets of the age. In 
 his Wanderer he tells how children unjustly suffer many 
 penalties, and are brought up obscurely in a life of want and 
 shame, as a result of the indiscretions of parents. He 
 trembles at the thought that there are mothers capable of 
 exposing children. 
 
 In a poem inscribed with "all due reverence to Mrs. 
 Brett, once Countess of Macclesfield, and finished in the 
 hours of deepest melancholy," he writes bitterly of his 
 mother. ^ He charges that she pushed him out upon the 
 sea of life, launching him without an oar. The concluding 
 paragraphs disclose bitter invective. No mother's devotion 
 shielded his infant innocence with prayer: no father's hand 
 restrained him from vice or upheld him in virtue. 
 
 Mother, miscalled, farewell — of soul severe, 
 This sad reflection yet may force a tear; 
 All I was wretched by, to you I owed, 
 Alone from strangers every comfort flowed. 
 
 In an age when the doctrine of universal benevolence per- 
 meated poetry, and when sentimental comedy and domestic 
 tragedy were popular, such passages must have made a 
 strong emotional appeal. His story, according to which he 
 becomes a modern instance of exposure, won a favorable 
 
 1 The Bastard. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 115 
 
 hearing not only from Johnson, whose "Life of Savage" 
 reads Hke a romance, but also from Lady Montagu and 
 Aaron Hill, who befriended him. 
 
 In the poem Of Public Spirit (in regard to Public 
 Works), Savage attacks luxury with its artificialities and 
 pompous whims as they appear in landscaped gardens. 
 Man's interest should not be selfish, but social. Thinking 
 of his own experience, he holds that there is need in the 
 nation for public institutions for the care of waifs. He em- 
 phasizes the need of conserving the child. The thoughtful 
 care of the state should not allow the helpless to suffer for 
 errors not their own. His suggestion that the mother 
 should be shielded provided the child is conserved, is the 
 same in intention as the legislation that marks Napoleon 
 among statesmen as a friend of children. Savage also con- 
 sidered himself to have suffered injustice from the state, 
 which is the ward of orphans. He reproaches unkind peers 
 for having neglected his rights. 
 
 The senate next, whose aid the helpless own, 
 Forgot my infant wrongs, and mine alone. 
 
 William Hamilton's Ode (on the neiv year, 1739) is a 
 severe arraignment of luxury. No one is so hateful to him 
 as the person in power who misuses orphans. He pours 
 contempt on the avaricious who squander on a luxurious 
 dinner what they ''Stole from the orphan and the poor." 
 Could not "impious greatness" give the smallest alms from 
 its "vile profusion"? "One table's vain intemperate load" 
 would have provided health and bread for cottage children. ^ 
 If the worldling would but listen, the oft-repeated words of 
 
 1 Hamilton, like other benevolist poets after 1730, leaned 
 heavily on Thomson. Cp. Summer for a description of a spend- 
 thrift, who squandered on himself 
 
 what might have cheered 
 A drooping family of modest worth. 
 
116 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 gratitude expressed by cottagers would be sweeter and more 
 appealing in their simple sincerity than the seducing trills of 
 Farinelli. Hamilton holds that no degeneracy is greater 
 than that of the man who was by nature kind, but who has 
 been corrupted by idle dreams of greatness in the form of 
 ribbons and coronets to the point where he "Unmoved shall 
 riot at the orphan's cost." His muse will lay bare their 
 treachery, and then let conscience judge "between the op- 
 pressed and you." 
 
 See, there, undried, the widow's tears; 
 See, there, unsoothed, the orphans' fears. 
 
 Robert Glynn has pictured the roll call of such agents 
 of misery in The Day of Judgment. 
 
 Here are they 
 Whom fraud and skilful treachery long secured ; 
 Who from the infant virgin tore her dower, 
 And ate the orphan's bread : — ^who spent their stores 
 In selfish luxury. 
 
 In the spirit of Hogarth, Somerville in Bowling-Green draws 
 a picture of Gripe, the lawyer, who is jovial with the fat 
 client. 
 
 But if the abandoned orphan puts his case, 
 
 How like a cur he snarls. 
 Armstrong refers in Benevolence (1751) to a whole family 
 of orphans who ought to be snatched from fate. Scott's 
 Palemon, or Benevolence, is a moral lecture to prosperous 
 farmers in the valley of Avon. In The Melancholy Evening 
 he states that to the feeling heart it is a joy to alleviate pain 
 and relieve poverty, but 
 
 Avarice grasps his useless store, 
 Though Misery's plaints his aid implore, 
 Though he, her ruined cottage nigh, 
 Beholds her famished infants lie, 
 And hears their faint, their last expiring cry ! 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 117 
 
 After the middle of the century the reader begins to 
 suspect the genuineness of the orphan who is mentioned 
 with clock-Hke regularity in connection with the charity 
 motive. The conventional attitude is not felt in Thomson 
 because he is warmed by a fine benevolence, and has the 
 additional advantage of being a pioneer; but constant repe- 
 tition of what seems like a colorless reference palls on the 
 modern reader until he wonders whether these poets could 
 have made an impression even in their day. But the benev- 
 olist poetry, which grows in force after Rousseau and the 
 industrial revolution, still clings to the orphan as a favorite 
 figure for pathos. 
 
 Langhorne's Country-Justice (1774 — 1777) calls atten- 
 tion to the fact that unnumbered 
 
 objects ask thy honest care, 
 Beside the orphan's tear, the widow's prayer. 
 He too wishes to alleviate the distresses of poverty by re- 
 straining the wealthy from wanton cruelty. He resents the 
 intrusions of landscaping and architecture in rural places, 
 and plainly addresses city people of wealth as "ye apes of 
 modern race" and "ye reptile cits," and writes that Plutus 
 may growl over his ill-got gains, while Mercury, the god 
 of stealth, and Janus, the shopman with double face, perch 
 upon ledgers of city merchants. In the pretentious towers 
 of the nabob he sees razed villages, "And tears of orphans 
 watering every tree." 
 
 His chief concern is to overcome the injustice committed 
 upon society by the failure of courts to recognize the good 
 qualities of man, so that a verdict is given or sentence 
 pronounced upon an evil-doer without reference to motives 
 which prompted the deed. In one of the ancient halls 
 which he prefers because they do not harbor a class of 
 heartless rich (he refers to the capitalists who bought up 
 land to compete with the landed nobility) stands a magis- 
 
118 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 terial chair from which true justice is dispensed by a stern 
 but just judge who displays 
 
 Honor's strong beam, and Mercy's melting shade; 
 Justice, that, in the rigid paths of law, 
 Would still some drop from Pity's fountain draw ; 
 Bend o'er her urn with many a generous fear, 
 Ere his firm seal should force an orphan's tear. 
 Langhorne is in earnest. He wishes to have justice dis- 
 pensed in a way that Shaftesbury would have approved. 
 Henry Headley's Rosalind's Dying Complaint (to her 
 sleeping child) is a poem of eleven stanzas, in which the un- 
 married mother weeps over her babe whose "cruel far-off 
 father" has left her to face unkind friends and cruel parents. 
 Headley has frankly treated his subject in a vein of senti- 
 mentalism. Unlike the vigorously human mother in the 
 Elizabethan lyric on the same theme, Rosalind does not face 
 her guilt, but lays her misfortunes to the injustice wrought 
 by organized society. She does not long forget herself in 
 the plight of her child, but blames the "ungentle hand of 
 rude mischance" that has reft her heart of rest. She is 
 awakened not so much to mother instincts as to a sense of 
 innocence not recognized in her environment. Her mother 
 will not hear her speak, and her father knits his brow. 
 "Sweet Heavens! were they never young?" Her friends 
 forsake her and smile when she thinks of her "true love" 
 who broke his word. The sentimental shift of responsibility 
 from the individual to society is clear in her exclamation, 
 May God amend their cruel hearts. 
 For surely they're to blame, i 
 
 1 In Frederick (1794), Southey's sentimental standard, which 
 is implied in the "Botany-Bay Eclogues" generally, leads him to 
 portray Frederick as shifting the blame for his faults to society, 
 even in the act of praying for forgiveness from God. 
 
 If I have sinned against mankind, on them 
 Be that past sin ; they made me what I was. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 119 
 
 Headley is interested in this phase of the subject, and 
 the child is hardly more than a text for preachment of 
 sentimental doctrine of the individual abused by society. 
 Rosalind wakes but to weep while she kisses her baby's 
 "pretty hand," and hears in the midnight tolling a call to 
 the "grass-green sward." Therefore she makes no brave 
 fight for life to protect her child, but succumbs to forces at 
 work against her. 
 
 Alas! my dearest baby 
 
 I grieve to see thee smile; 
 I think upon thy rueful lot, 
 
 And cold's my heart the while. 
 
 'Gainst wind and tide of worldly woe, 
 
 I cannot make my way; 
 To lull thee in my bosom warm, 
 
 I feel I must not stay. 
 
 Jerningham's The Magdalens (1763) engages "soft- 
 eyed Pity" in the cause of fallen women who have been 
 rescued by Hanway's house of charity. They fell through 
 no fault of theirs. 
 
 Once destitute of counsel, aid, or food, 
 Some helpless orphans in this dome reside, 
 Who (like the wandering children in the wood) 
 Trod the rude paths of life without a guide. 
 
 They had been won to evil by persuasive words that moved 
 their generous nature, and were hurried into situations 
 which "their inborn virtue disapproved." ^ Though early 
 
 1 Compare The Prostitute of H. K. White : 
 
 Once wert thou happy — thou wert once innocent: 
 But the seducer beguiled thee in artlessness, 
 Then he abandoned thee unto thine infamy. 
 
120 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 stained, they now claim a second innocence which is, how- 
 ever, disturbed by memories of past suffering. One of the 
 unfortunates recalls how she had been abandoned to wander 
 in the storm with her helpless babes, who died of hunger ; 
 and she still cries out in agony of soul against her seducer. 
 Jerningham appeals to man's humanity not to deride them 
 now or to mock their undeserved penitential woes. 
 
 'Tis Virtue's task to soothe affliction's smart, 
 To join in sadness with the fair distrest; 
 Wake to another's pain the tender heart, 
 And move to clemency the generous breast. 
 
 Jerningham's Margaret of Anjou, An Historical Inter- 
 lude, illustrates how a wave of sentiment was made to en- 
 gulf the audience. The advertisement says: 'This histori- 
 cal interlude is upon the same plan that Rousseau com- 
 posed his Pygmalion, which is a new species of dramatic 
 entertainment consisting of a monologue that is often sus- 
 pended by the interposition of music, which must sympa- 
 thize with the passions and feelings of the personage who is 
 supposed to speak." After a lost battle Margaret leads 
 in her child, who falls asleep under a tree while the mother, 
 "hanging fondly over him," relates his woes. When the 
 child wakes, he asks for his slain father. A ruffian bent on 
 pillage enters at this moment, but is moved to compassion 
 by the mother's appeals for humanity, and reforms on the 
 spot. 
 
 Jerningham, whose old age carried him over into the 
 new century, is characterized in Gifford's Baeviad as ''sniv- 
 eling Jerningham," and is depicted as weeping at the age of 
 fifty "o'er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep." But that 
 his poems served the practical purposes of reform is evi- 
 dent from the statement of Hanway, who credits him with 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 121 
 
 having materially aided by his poetry in the establishment 
 of the Magdalen House. ' 
 
 Two poems by H. K. White are sentimental studies. A 
 Ballad depicts a ''heart-sick weary wanderer," whose "faith- 
 less lover" cruelly left her "faint and lone" after she had 
 been disowned by her parents. 
 
 My child moans sadly in my arms, 
 
 The winds they will not let it sleep : 
 Ah, little knows the hapless babe 
 
 What makes its wretched mother weep! 
 
 Now lie thee still, my infant dear, 
 
 I cannot bear thy sobs to see; 
 Harsh is thy father, little one. 
 
 And never will he shelter thee. 
 
 Oh, that I were but in my grave. 
 
 And winds were piping o'er me loud, 
 And thou, my poor, my orphan babe, 
 
 Wert nestling in thy mother's shroud! 
 
 The Lullaby of a Female Convict to her Child (The Night 
 Previous to Execution) is typical, both in choice of sub- 
 ject and treatment, of the desire to shield an unfortunate 
 
 1 Jonas Hanway was a friend of children. In 1761 he ob- 
 tained an act which obliged all London parishes to keep an annual 
 register of parish infants; and another act by which such infants 
 within the bills of mortality must be housed not in a workhouse, but, 
 until they were six years of age, beyond a specified number of miles 
 outside London. In i759 he published A Candid Historical Account 
 of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and Deserted Young 
 Children, and Thoughts on the Plan for a Magdalen House for Re- 
 pentant Prostitutes. How closely poetry is wrapped up with hu- 
 manitarian reform is clear from the relation of Jerningham to the 
 project of Hanway for rescuing fallen women. (Consult Dic- 
 tionary of National Biography, s. v. Jerningham, Edward.) In 
 1766 Hanway published An Earnest Appeal for Mercy to the Chil- 
 dren of the Poor, and in 1767 Letters on the Importance of the 
 Rising Generation of the Labouring Part of Our Fellow Subjects. 
 
122 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 mother. White does not arouse sympathy by mere com- 
 ment, but appeals to the reader's sensibiHties by reproducing 
 the mother's words. UnHke those of Headley's RosaHnd, 
 the mother's thoughts are wholly absorbed in her child, 
 whom she addresses, and whose fate she bemoans. The 
 closing stanza is characteristic of the whole poem: 
 
 Sleep, baby mine — Tomorrow I must leave thee, 
 And I would snatch an interval of rest : 
 
 Sleep these last moments ere the laws bereave thee, 
 For never more thou'lt press a mother's breast. 
 
 The sentimental shift of responsibility is obvious in 
 sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy. In Aaron Hill's 
 tragedy The Fatal Extravagance (1721), the hero's mis- 
 deeds are sympathetically palliated by reference to evil com- 
 panionship in youth. Through his generosity, Bellmour 
 had allowed himself to be lured into evil ways. His ap- 
 peal to his wife is made not for himself : 
 
 Thine and thy helpless infants' woes rise to me, 
 Glare on my apprehension like pale ghosts, 
 And point me into madness. 
 
 Although the problem of the tragedy centers about the 
 fate of Bellmour, the parental emotions of Louisa and Bell- 
 mour lead them to speak constantly of their children. When 
 she realizes that he has gambled away their fortune, she 
 thinks only of her husband, and says to his uncle. 
 
 How, then, will he support the weeping anguish, 
 Of three poor children, all undone by him? 
 
 Courtney wishes he might shield her, but Louisa is moved 
 only by Bellmour's distress, and trembles at the thought of 
 looking upon his face : 
 
 His ruined family hangs on his heart, 
 
 His helpless children's future state distracts him, 
 
 And the once lively Bellmour smiles no more. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 123 
 
 Bellmour is moved by the thought of his poverty-stricken 
 
 children : 
 
 To die at once, 
 Were comfort even in agony. — But I shall be, 
 Whole ages, after death, in dying — Villains, 
 Dull, pitiless, insulting, dirty villains. 
 Will point at some poor ragged child of mine. 
 And say, "There's pride and name! . . . 
 There's the blest remnant of a boasted family!" 
 
 Writers of domestic tragedy until late in the century were 
 prompt to shield the weakness of a fellow man and to see 
 evil as a shade of good which man but faintly comprehends. 
 Since the days of the miracle play Abraham and Isaac, 
 children had been employed in tragedy to heighten effect. 
 Yet writers of domestic tragedy in the eighteenth century 
 show no advance over their predecessors in the treatment 
 of the child element. ^ 
 
 George Lillo's apprentice tragedy, Th£ London Mer- 
 chant, or the History of George Barnwell (1731) was played 
 yearly before apprentices until the days of Charles Lamb, 
 who remarked upon its easy morality. Lillo has changed 
 the deliberate villian of the ballad into a merchant's clerk 
 who is led on by the courtesan Millwood to embezzle money 
 and murder his uncle. In his crimes, Maria, the daughter 
 of his employer Thorowgood, can see only the results of 
 misguided innocence. The sincerely penitent Barnwell is 
 executed, but has not lacked the sympathy and affection of 
 his fellow clerk Trueman, Maria, and her father, who to 
 the end have confidence in the goodness of his heart. 
 Trueman says to Maria, "So well I know him, I'm sure 
 this act of his, so contrary to his nature, must have been 
 caused by some unavoidable necessity." Thorowgood de- 
 
 ^ Compare Addison's extended ridicule of weeping widows 
 with orphaned children in tragedies. (Spectator, No. 44.^ 
 
124 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 noimces Millwood : "I know how, step by step, you've led 
 him on, reluctant and unwilling. . . . But Heaven, who 
 knows our frame, and graciously distinguishes between 
 frailty and presumption, will make a difference, though man 
 can not, who sees not the heart, but only judges by the out- 
 ward action." 
 
 The new standards, then, influenced dramatists and 
 poets alike. The dramatists Hill, Lillo, Benjamin Victor, 
 and Cumberland were working in the same mood as Jern- 
 ingham, Headley, Southey, and White. ^ 
 
 Langhorne strikes at the root of the problem of charity. 
 He is not content to stop with superficial charity that strives 
 to ameliorate conditions by gifts of food and clothing; but 
 he endeavors to remove the causes of poverty and distress by 
 educating country justices to note motives and environment 
 as influences that must be taken into account if an intelligent 
 judgment is to be pronounced. Before making his de- 
 cision, a judge must determine whether the deed was prompt- 
 ed by vice or nature, and must take into account "the strong 
 temptation and the need." Justices must learn to know con- 
 ditions which caused distress, in order to relieve it. They 
 can remove the cause by themselves hearing the testimony 
 of unfortunate cottagers, in place of turning them over to 
 petty rascals like parish officers. 
 
 Langhorne is especially concerned with the inhumanity 
 of parish officers, who, as is known from other sources, 
 played a shameful part as agents in farming out helpless 
 children to industrial establishments. He looks upon the 
 parish officer as a monster furnished with a human frame. 
 The magistrate should ''shake the reptile soul" of such a 
 
 1 For an analysis of other sentimental plays of the eighteenth 
 century, but without special reference to childhood, see Ernest 
 Bernbaum, The Drama of Sensibility. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 125 
 
 ''caitiff wretch." Langhorne knows of a landowner on 
 whose estates no -baiHff wields petty power. The master 
 himself looks to it that the sick have medicine and the aged 
 bread. Hlo illustrate his faith in human nature, Langhorne 
 cites the instance of a "pitying robber" who came upon a 
 new-born babe under a thorn and 
 
 To the next cot the trembling infant bore, 
 And gave a part of what he stole before. 
 
 He was a stranger in the community ; but he had the instincts 
 of a man, and ''dropped a human tear." On the other 
 hand, the penniless mother of this child had received cruel 
 treatment from parish officers who had driven her far 
 "beyond the town's last limits." ^ Langhorne's standards 
 of justice demand that the magistrate should pause "if Vir- 
 tue's slightest sparks remain." He is the sole protector of 
 unpitied women, and should consider well before commit- 
 ting them to the "shameless lash" and the "hardening jail." 
 The dictates of humanity require that he be forbearing. 
 
 The downcast eye. the tear that flows amain. 
 
 As if to ask her innocence again ; 
 
 The plaintive babe, that slumbering seemed to lie 
 
 On her soft breast, and wakes at the heaved sigh ; 
 
 The cheek that wears the beauteous robe of shame; 
 
 How loath they leave a gentle breast to blame. 
 
 Langhorne's poem touched hearts long after its publi- 
 cation. This is evident from his biographer's statement: 
 "It would be difficult to find anywhere lines more affecting 
 than those which in the first part describe the soldier's widow 
 weeping over her child. The benevolent spirit which per- 
 vades the whole of ithe poem cannot be too warmly praised. "- 
 
 1 Parish officers were especially cruel in instances like this. 
 
 - The Life of John Langhorne, by R. A. Davenport, Esq., in 
 The British Poets (Chiswick), 1822, Vol. LXV. 
 
126 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Cowper was familiar with the sufferings of cottage chil- 
 dren from having assisted Newton in charitable work. At 
 his own winter evening fireside, Cowper enjoys the peaceful 
 cozy recess and the calm which restore him to himself while 
 the storm is raging without. On such a night the poor have 
 a "friend in every feeling heart." There is irony in his 
 statement that the ill-clad and sparsely-fed peasant who is 
 heated by his day's labor finds time to cool in his cottage. 
 Cowper's heart goes out to the children clustered about the 
 ineffective fire. Close observation is reflected in the pathetic 
 lines which show how they warmed their hands by the in- 
 sufficient aid of a candle flame. 
 
 The frugal housewife trembles when she lights 
 
 Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear, 
 
 But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. 
 
 The few small embers left she nurses well ; 
 
 And while her infant race, with outspread hands 
 
 And crowded knees, sit cowering o'er the sparks, 
 
 Retires, content to quake, so they be warmed. 
 
 The man feels least, as more inured than she 
 
 To winter, and the current in his veins 
 
 More briskly moved by his severer toil ; 
 
 Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs. 
 
 The taper soon extinguished, which I saw 
 
 Dangled along at the cold fingers' end 
 
 Just when the day declined. . . . 
 
 * 
 
 Sleep seems their only refuge : for, alas ! 
 Where penury is felt the thought is chained, 
 And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few. ^ 
 
 Where he fails to sympathize with robust children at play, 
 his inmost soul is moved by the distress of children suffer- 
 ing from hunger and cold. 
 
 1 The Task, IV, 380—398. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 127 
 
 Two of Cowper's most successful pictures of childhood 
 reveal sympathetic observation of children suffering from 
 cold. In Truth there is an effective portrait of a boy out at 
 service to an old maid. Cowper is obviously amused by the 
 "ancient prude" and her shabby gentility, but is in full 
 sympathy with the incongruously dressed and freezing boy. 
 Without the footnote reference to Hogarth's Morning, it is 
 evident that Cowper's conception of the boy and his pious 
 mistress is in the mood of Hogarth. Although given to 
 thrift and parsimony, 
 
 She yet allows herself that boy behind; 
 The shivering urchin, bending as he goes. 
 With slipshod heels, and dewdrop at his nose, 
 His predecessor's coat advanced to wear, 
 Which future pages yet are doomed to share, 
 Carries her Bible tucked beneath his arm, 
 And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm, i 
 
 1 Although the lot of apprentices must have been unusually 
 hard because of long hours and close supervision, poets before Blake 
 have not noticed them with any show of sympathy. Blake's two 
 poems on chimney-sweepers notice the lot of what Lamb called these 
 "dim specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses" who "from their 
 little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December 
 morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind." Lamb senti- 
 mentalizes his observation of these poor children. As a child he 
 had pursued them in imagination as they "went sounding on through 
 so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades" — to shudder with the 
 idea that " now, surely, he must be lost forever." Lamb does not as 
 much as allude to the cruelties to which these climbing boys were 
 subjected. It is known that their masters forced them into chim- 
 neys by prodding them with sharp instruments and even by building 
 a fire under them. When James Montgomery of Sheffield edited 
 The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, and the Climbing Boy's Albunu 
 (1824) in order to stimulate philanthropic interest in legislation 
 favoring these abused children. Lamb sent in, as his contribution, 
 Blake's poem from the Songs of Innocence, which carried the head- 
 ing "Communicated by Mr. Charles Lamb, from a very curious little 
 
128 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Like Langhorne, Cowper notices dishonest parish offi- 
 cers, who are partial in the distribution of charity. His 
 cottagers would rather suffer the pangs of hunger than sub- 
 mit to the "rugged frowns and insolent rebuffs" of knaves 
 in office. He cheers them with the hope of assistance from 
 his household ; a distant benefactor, who can be identified 
 as Lord Carrington, will keep them from want. Their hope 
 may also lie justly in their children : 
 
 Time will give increase, 
 And all your numerous progeny, well trained 
 But helpless, in few years shall find their hands, 
 And labor too. 
 
 Cowper, whose humanitarianism was prompted by evan- 
 gelical fervor, makes a plea like that of Langhorne. He 
 considers the instance of a thief who steals by night to 
 feed his family. Cowper holds that there is some excuse 
 for him if pity for their sufferings warps aside his principles, 
 and tempts him into sin for the support of his destitute 
 family. But having gone so far, Cowper feels it necessary 
 to balance the scales by a vigorous denunciation of the villian 
 
 Who starves his own, who persecutes the blood 
 He gave them in his children's veins, and hates 
 And wrongs the woman he has sworn to love. 
 
 Thomas Russell is likewise thinking in terms of religious 
 belief when he chides a young man for not being moved to 
 sympathy by cottage children. 
 
 Could then the babes from yon unsheltered cot 
 Implore thy passing charity in vain ? 
 
 work." Late in the eighteenth century, Joseph Blacket, a Yorkshire 
 poet, strikes a personal note in Reason's Address to the Poet, in the 
 opening stanzas of which he refers to his apprenticeship to a cobbler : 
 Child of mischance! by fortune's favourites spurned. 
 At distance from the good, the truly great. 
 In broken accents my hard lot I mourned, 
 In sighs lamented my unhappy fate. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 129 
 
 Russell follows orthodox theology by postponing the re- 
 ward of the distressed cottagers to a future world. 
 
 Too thoughtless youth! what though thy happier lot 
 Insult their life of poverty and pain. 
 What though their Maker doomed them, thus forlorn, 
 To brook the mockery of the taunting throng, 
 Beneath the oppressor's iron scourge to mourn, 
 To mourn but not to murmur at his wrong. 
 Yet when their last late evening shall decline. 
 Their evening cheerful, though their day distressed, 
 A hope perhaps more heavenly bright than thine, 
 A grace by thee unsought and unpossessed, 
 A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine 
 Shall gild their passage to eternal rest. 
 
 The benevolists differ from; poets like Cowper and 
 Russell in that the benevolists, whose attitude is conditioned 
 by Shaftesbury's' doctrine of natural goodness, did not post- 
 pone redress to an unknowable future. They insisted that 
 the benevolent instincts of man should be given free play 
 in this life in order that all men may be partakers of the 
 happiness which their maker intended they should enjoy. ^ 
 Because of the natural goodness and instinctive benevolence 
 which he ascribed to man, Shaftesbury had definitely 
 attacked the "rod and sweetmeat" doctrine as unnecessary 
 and, in fact, harmful. Scott of Amwell is conscious of a 
 cleavage between himself and those who believe, for in- 
 stance, in predestination. The optimistic quaker poet 
 apologizes for sentiments he expresses in The Melancholy 
 Evening. \The following lines from that poem clearly re- 
 veal the temper of those who followed Shaftesbury. Scott 
 has been writing of the plagues of helpless mankind — fear, 
 
 ^ Cowper was apparently disturbed by the views of men like 
 Richardson, who was, in his estimation, not making sufficient 
 allowance for faith. See An Ode (on reading Mr. Richardson's 
 History of Sir Charles Grandison.) 
 
130 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 despair, ambition, guilt, avarice — and has shown how 
 famished infants die in the sight of Avarice. If man 
 must bear the reign of these plagues, he had better never 
 have been created. 
 
 Say, will Religion clear this gloom, 
 And point to bliss beyond the tomb ! 
 Yes, haply for her chosen train; 
 The rest, they say, severe decrees ordain 
 To realms of endless night and everlasting pain ! 
 
 Where Cowper's extended and faithful transcription from 
 cottage life makes a sure appeal for a consideration of the 
 children of the poor, but at the same time does not go beyond 
 the symptoms of poverty, the benevolists, by striking at fun- 
 damental causes, go to the root of the evils of poverty, and 
 wish to remedy conditions that cause poverty. Cowper has 
 visualized cottage children with knees together before the 
 scanty fire, but he has not recognized the odds against the 
 cottager in the surrounding circumstances for which he can 
 not be held responsible. ^ 
 
 The feeling heart of Burns responded sympathetically to 
 the sufferings of the poor. The Ruined Farmer ( 1777) rep- 
 resents his father at Mount Oliphant. It is evident from 
 Burns's autobiography that the farm had proved a ruinous 
 
 1 Wordsworth seems to recognize a difference between the 
 teaching of the Church and that of Nature. In the first book of 
 The Excursion he tells how the "Scottish Church" had held (with 
 a "strong hand of purity") the Wanderer and those "With whom 
 from childhood he grew up." But whatever the Wanderer had im- 
 bibed of "fear or darker thought," the "native vigour of his mind" 
 had "melted all away" : 
 
 Sometimes his religion seemed to me 
 Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods ; 
 Who to the model of his own pure heart 
 Shaped his belief, as grace divine inspired, 
 And human reason dictated with awe. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 131 
 
 bargain: *'My father was advanced in life when he married. 
 I was the eldest of seven children, and he, worn out by 
 early hardship, was unfit for labor. My father's spirit was 
 soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom 
 in his lease in two years more ; and to weather these two 
 years we retrenched expenses." 
 
 The poem is conceived as a meditation. *'The sun is 
 sunk in the West." His father is sore beset with sorrow 
 and grief over his poverty, which awakens thoughts of mis- 
 ery while he sits by the fire and listens to the tempests that 
 blow about the cottage. Not long ago he had been in a posi- 
 tion to relieve distress ; but now he can with difficulty earn 
 enough to support his wife and children. He looks upon 
 his sleeping wife, whose cares are for a moment at rest. He 
 is in despair over having brought her so low. 
 
 There lie my sweet babies in her arms ; 
 No anxious fear their little hearts alarms ; 
 But for their sake my heart does ache, 
 With many a bitter throe. 
 
 He is embittered to the verge of welcoming the grave as a 
 refuge from the ills of fortune. The thought of their de- 
 pendence arouses his manlier self: 
 
 But then my wife and children dear — 
 O whither would they go ! 
 
 Although he does not know which way to turn, "All friend- 
 less, forsaken, and forlorn," he must endure. Although 
 there can be no rest or peace, the mute appeal of his chil- 
 dren stirs the father heart in him, and he takes new courage 
 to face the morrow. 
 
 In The Cotter's Saturday-Night (1785) Burns indirectly 
 attacks luxury and the haughty lordling's pride by doing his 
 best to paint an appealing picture of the simple life of the 
 cotter. Fundamentally the poem is motivated by Burns's 
 contempt for lords. City and country life are contrasted in 
 
132 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 the thought that the poet's friend Aiken, even though his 
 worth had not become known, would have been happier in a 
 cottage. In order to scale down "the lordling's pomp," he 
 portrays "The native feelings strong, and guileless ways" 
 of an honest toiler and his family, who represent sturdy 
 democratic virtues. Although Burns succeeds in empha- 
 sizing idylHc elements while he sings "The lowly train in 
 life's sequester'd scene," they have not altogether crowded 
 out harsher facts that throw light on the hardships and pri- 
 vations of the cotter and his family. 
 
 The chill November wind blows as the toil-worn cotter, 
 his "weekly moil at end," plods across the moor. As he 
 comes in sight of his cot, his younger children, 
 
 Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through 
 
 To meet their "dad," wi' flichterin' noise and glee. 
 
 He is cheered by his thrifty wife's smile, and sits before the 
 "wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie." 
 
 The lisping infant, prattling on his knee. 
 
 Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile. 
 And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil. ^ 
 Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, 
 
 At service out, amang the farmers roun' ; 
 Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 
 
 A cannie errand to a neibor town : 
 
 Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, 
 In youthfu' bloom — love sparkling in her e'e — 
 
 Comes hame ; perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, 
 Or deposite her sair-won penny fee, 
 To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 
 
 1 Compare The Poor Man's Prayer by the Rev. Dr. Roberts of 
 Eton : 
 
 While I, contented with my homely cheer. 
 Saw round my knees my prattling children play; 
 And oft with pressed attention sat to hear 
 The little history of their idle day. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 133 
 
 Time passes swift-winged until a strapping lad who 
 calls on Jenny is received by her parents. They are happy 
 in the thought that their "bairn's respected like the lave." 
 Then the cottager's simple fare is set out for supper. It 
 consists of wholesome po'rridge, "chief of Scotia's food," 
 and milk from their only cow which is chewing the cud 
 beyond the kitchen wall. As a special treat the mother 
 brings out from her storeroom a ripe cheese she had treas- 
 ured for such an occasion. After this frugal supper the 
 family form a wide circle before the ingle, and with serious 
 mien listen to the father, who with patriarchal simplicity 
 reads from the "big ha'-bible." They sing hymns com- 
 pared with which "Italian trills are tame." 
 
 Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way; 
 
 The youngling cottagers retire to rest : 
 The parent-pair their secret homage pay, 
 
 And proffer up to Heaven the warm request, 
 
 That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, 
 And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride. 
 
 Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best. 
 For them and for their little ones provide ; 
 But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside. 
 
 Although the children are happy and their parents thrifty, 
 the veil of sentiment does not altogether obscure the harsher 
 facts of the cotter's anxiety and the not too remote con- 
 tingency of hardship against which Jenny deposits her 
 sorely-won penny. The emphasis is not on social or econo- 
 mic conditions of the Scotch cotter, but on his sturdy hon- 
 esty and God-fearing qualities. Even these. Burns fears, 
 are endangered by new conditions which, "From luxury's 
 contagion, weak and vile," threaten to infect the "hardy 
 sons of rustic toil" who make Scotland "lov'd at home, 
 rever'd abroad." 
 
134 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Althoug^h idyllic in his treatment, Burns is not blind, 
 even in this poem, to the distressful poverty of cottagers. 
 Several poems indicate that he is a son of the Revolution. 
 His fiery attacks on class privilege are conceived in the 
 mood of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. In Tzm Dogs 
 ( 1786) he mercilessly holds up the vices of the ruling classes, 
 and swells the chorus of condemnation directed against 
 petty officials. The unfortunate poor must endure meekly 
 the abuses of a gesturing, cursing factor who threatens to 
 distrain their effects. In the language of the dog Caesar, 
 the gentry care as little for delvers, ditchers, **an' sic cattle," 
 as he does for a soiled badger. 'In Man was made to Mourn 
 (1784) Burns protests against the sacrifices of the poor 
 man who labors to support ''a haughty lordling's pride." 
 A manuscript variant makes the accusation specific. On 
 a cold November evening the poet meets a toil-worn old man. 
 In the course of protests against conditions that oppress 
 this man, Burns calls attention to the overworked laborer 
 who finds it necessary to beg a brother man to give him 
 leave to toil, 
 
 And see his lordly fellow-worm 
 
 The poor petition spurn, 
 Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife 
 
 And helpless offspring mourn. 
 
 Burns was himself oppressed by anxiety over his chil- 
 dren. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop (1793) he quotes the 
 opening stanza and the chorus of "an old Scots ballad," and 
 comments on his own poverty. 
 
 O that I had ne'er been married, 
 
 I wad never had nae care, 
 Now I've gotten wife an' weans, 
 
 An' they cry "crowdie" (food) evermair. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 135 
 
 Ance crowdie, twice crowdie, 
 
 Three times crowdie in a day; 
 Gin ye "crowdie" any mair, 
 
 Ye'll crowdie a' my meal away. 
 
 "I see a train of helpless little folks — ^me and my exertions 
 all their stay. . . . If I am nipt off at the command of 
 fate, even in all the vigor of manhood. . . . Gracious 
 God! . . . what would become of my little flock?" 
 
 The Address to Beehebub (1786) definitely suggests the 
 biting sarcasm and vitriolic attacks of Paine. Burns ironi- 
 cally commends the Earl of Breadalbane's endeavors to 
 frustrate the attempt of five hundred highlanders to escape 
 to Canada from their lawful masters, "whose property they 
 are." They were living in abject poverty and squalor, and 
 wished to better their condition. Burns ironically urges the 
 Earl's agents to activity, and notices the degraded state of 
 children who suffer with their elders. He mockingly invites 
 the Earl to visit his cottage, where Burns will dignify him 
 by seating him at the ingle-side " 'Tween Herod's hip an' 
 Polycrate," a seat which, the poet observes, he well deserves. 
 The language of Burns is as unsparing as that of Paine, and 
 as harsh as the lines of Hogarth when he pictures the squalor 
 and rags of London brats in Gin Lane. If the Earl does not 
 wish his people to keep their native Highland spirit, he 
 should have his agents ''smash them" into chips, or let the 
 bankrupts rot in the jails. As for the children : 
 
 The young dogs, swinge them to the labor; 
 Let wark an' hunger mak them sober ! 
 
 And for the girls he advises, in the cynical mood of their 
 superiors, that if they are seemly they should be sent to 
 Drury Lane to be lessoned. 
 
136 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 An' if the wives an' dirty brats 
 Come thiggin at your doors an' yetts, 
 Flaffiii wi' duds, and grey wi' beas, 
 Frighten away your ducks an' geese ; 
 Get out a horsewhip or a jowler, 
 The langest thong, the fiercest growler, 
 An' gar the tattered gypsies pack 
 Wi' a' their bastards on their back ! 
 
 The gentle protest of the sentimentalists here takes on the 
 fire of those who like Paine protested with colloquial vigor 
 in the spirit of the Revolution. 
 
 Among the poets before 1800, Southey had most fully 
 awakened to the suffering brought upon children by war. 
 Southey does not see the glamour of war. His heart suf- 
 fers with the innocent victims in cottage homes. Extended 
 development is found in The Soldiers Wife (1795), in 
 which he catches up the war motive to give it independent 
 treatment in a full-length group portrait of the widow and 
 her children. She is wearily trudging along the highway 
 with her children. 
 
 Sorely thy little one drags by thee barefooted; 
 Cold is the baby that hangs at thy bending back, 
 Meagre and livid, and screaming for misery. 
 
 Woe-begone mother, half anger, half agony, 
 
 As over thy shoulder thou look'st to hush the babe. 
 
 Bleakly the blinding snow beats in thy haggard face. ^ 
 
 Ne'er will thy husband return from the war again ; 
 Cold is thy heart, and as frozen as Charity; 
 Cold are thy children. — Now God be thy comforter ! 
 
 Southey's Victory (1798) contrasts with the nation's 
 wild rejoicing over a naval victory the sadness of the home 
 which has lost a sailor father who had been forced by 
 lawful violence 
 
 1 Coleridge composed the second stanza. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 137 
 
 From his own home and wife and Httle ones, 
 Who by his labor Hved ; that he was one 
 Whose uncorrupted heart could keenly feel 
 A husband's love, a father's anxiousness ; 
 That from the wages of his toil he fed 
 The distant dear ones, and would talk of them 
 At midnight when he trod the silent deck 
 With him he valued, — talk of them, of joys 
 Which he had known, — O God ! and of the hour 
 When they should meet again. . . . 
 
 Man does not know what a cold sickness chilled the widow's 
 blood when she heard tidings of the sea fight; nor does 
 man know with what dread she listened to the jiames of 
 those who died : 
 
 Man does not know, or, knowing will not heed, 
 
 With what an agony of tenderness 
 
 She gazed upon her children, and beheld 
 
 His image who was gone. 
 
 Southey is not merely writing about war, but endeavors to 
 realize concretely the effects of war in the cottage home. 
 Instead of merely referring to the widow, he attempts to 
 analyze her emotions as stirred by her children. Imagina- 
 tive presentation has taken the place of incidental reference. 
 The thought of children as the ''image" of their parent has 
 been taken from its conventional setting in complimentary 
 verse, and has been made an emotional force in an already 
 tense situation. ^ 
 
 1 Complaints of the Poor (1798) depicts a soldier's wife, seated 
 by the roadside, with a baby at her back and an infant at her breast. 
 The Soldier's Funeral (1795) combines the orphan, mother, and love 
 of home motives. Compare also Southey's Humphrey and William 
 (1794), and Wordsworth's lines on Margaret in Book I of The 
 Excursion. 
 
 Southey notices childhood in his Sonnets (1794) on the slave 
 trade, and in the poem To the Genius of Africa (1795) ; and Hannah 
 More has piercing lines in The Black Slave Trade. 
 
138 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Southey's deep humanitarian concern over the injustice 
 which man has done to man through war finds classical 
 expression in The Battle of Blenheim (1805). It is the 
 finest flowering of the war motive in the treatment of child- 
 hood. With imaginative realization he combines an ob- 
 jectivity that makes the children and their grandfather real 
 human beings. It was a master-stroke to take Peterkin and 
 Wilhelmine at evening play near the cottage of their grand- 
 father Kaspar on the battlefield of Blenheim, and to record 
 their unconscious protest against warfare. At last, after a 
 century of incidental notice of the widow and her orphans, 
 children have emerged to protest in their innocent childlike 
 manner against the makers of war. By an objective reali- 
 zation of the predicament in which Kaspar finds himself 
 after the naive questioning of the children, who do not 
 understand the abstract "greatness" of a general like Prince 
 Eugene but who insist on the fundamental "why," Southey 
 has brought home his point. In true child spirit, Peterkin 
 and Wilhelmine, who are unconscious of the full significance 
 of their questions, solve the problem with a finality that is 
 not possible in the argumentative attack. Southey was not 
 toying with his subject. That his interest in the situation 
 is not merely literary is clear in the light of the deep humani- 
 tarian interest he displayed on the subject of war, especially 
 in Victory. This poem as closest to The Battle of Blenheim 
 in its insistence on the hollowness of popular acclaim in the 
 face of destitute children who must pay with their suffermgs 
 in the miseries of privation. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The problem of charity in relation to childhood became 
 increasingly acute because of the growth of industrial cen- 
 ters which, with the congestion of population, presented 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 139 
 
 new problems that men had not faced even in London. The 
 center of gravity in English life was shifting to the cities, 
 so that there was increasing danger that poets, who felt an 
 instinctive antagonism toward city life, would lose touch 
 with affairs. Yet long before industry became centered in 
 cities, it had been carried on in households throughout 
 Britain. The development was from home industry to 
 factory industry ; and long before children were employed in 
 factories, they had worked on loom and wheel in the home. 
 From Gay to Wordsworth, poets have noticed the spinning 
 industry as it was carried on in cottages. Although chil- 
 dren are not always specifically mentioned in this connection, 
 numerous allusions indicate that the practice of employing 
 cottage children was universal in the eighteenth century. 
 The epic of English commercial supremacy in the eigh- 
 teenth century is interwoven with the didactic lines of John 
 Dyer's The Fleece (i757)> which gives rules for the care of 
 sheep to be sure, but at the same time broadens out into a 
 consideration of the foundations of English commerce. 
 It is significant for this study that Dyer incidentally notices 
 the problem of children in their relation to the flourishing 
 spinning industry. 
 
 He is proud of Albion's greatness, but while contemplat- 
 ing her success does not ignore hardship and suffering, 
 which were on the increase. In his endeavor to accentuate 
 the practical value of his program. Dyer paints a rosy pic- 
 ture of smiling countrysides, and glories in the prosperity 
 of magnificent seaports crowded with forests of masts. 
 In the course of his discussion of flourishing city commum- 
 ties he calls the roll of industrial centers which are familiar 
 enough now, but which were new in his day, such as 
 Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, and "merchan- 
 dising Hull." He has his eye on the economic trend of 
 
140 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 events when he records that country people are crowding 
 into cities in search of "tardy-rising wealth." Dyer sees 
 facts from the point of view of one who is interested in so- 
 cial reconstruction.^ 
 
 The Fleece is motivated by a desire to increase the hap- 
 piness of English people through the salvation that comes 
 from industrious labor. Dyer sees intemperance, the foe 
 of labor, at his dastardly business of deluding ignorant work- 
 ers into leaving honest industry, with consequent poverty 
 and suffering. As he rises to a climax in a passage on the 
 malicious workings of this eighteenth-century bolshevik, he 
 notices the suffering unjustly entailed on children. As a 
 matter of fact, thirty years before Crabbe, though not to 
 the same extent, Dyer called attention to the problem of 
 filth and squalor in cottage homes : 
 
 cease 
 The loom and shuttle in their troubled streets ; 
 Their motion stopped by wild Intemperance, 
 Toil's suffering foe, who lures the giddy rout 
 To scorn their task-work, and to vagrant life 
 Turns their rude steps ; while Misery, among 
 The cries of infants, haunts their mouldering huts. 
 
 His enthusiasm is all for the "felicities of labor." He 
 would stimulate activity until the "sounding loom" mixes 
 with the "melody of every vale." If the worth and content- 
 ment that go with honest toil were recognized, the sun would 
 shine in every cottage home. The weaver's shuttle is a 
 
 1 In Agriculture Dodsley sees only the "ruddy maid" whose 
 "dexterous hand" twirls her wheel ; and Cowper, although noticing 
 the spinner's "scanty pittance," prefers to find ideal contentment 
 and rural felicity in her heart, which is as light as her purse. 
 Where Scott and Cowper are conservative or tend toward idyllic in- 
 sistence on the happiness of the cottage spinner who "jocund chants 
 her lay" while "whirling" her "circling wheel" beside the cottage 
 door, Dyer does not ignore harsh realities. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 141 
 
 ''flowering shuttle," and cities are ''glad cities of the loom." 
 Not content, like Scott and Cowper, to stop with idyllic 
 glimpses that ignore the shade for the sunshine, and not 
 moved, like the benevolists, merely to cry out against man 
 for the injustice which especially in that age he has done 
 to his fellow man, and not satisfied to give only his sympa- 
 thy to poor cottagers, Dyer ofifers constructive suggestions 
 for the betterment of conditions. He does not stop with 
 charity that ignores the causes of misery, but he points the 
 way to a solution that will remove those causes. 
 
 His directions for the ambitious youth who would ac- 
 quire a loom are specific. When the machine has been in- 
 stalled, the industrious youth lays in a store of soft yarn. 
 He smooths the threads of the warp by stringing them 
 along the garden walk. Then he sits down to his work and 
 guides the "thready shuttle" skilfully as it glides from hand 
 to hand. Various kinds of weaving are explained. There 
 is a realistic description of a "noisy fulling-mill," and an 
 equally detailed picture of activities at the dyeing vats. 
 Dyer is far ahead of contemporary men of letters in his 
 appreciation of the poetic possibilities of machinery, the 
 enthusiasm for which leads him to a belief in its efficacy as 
 an agent of social uplift. ^ 
 
 When Dyer considers the charitable aspects of organized 
 industrial activities of the poor, he ofifers the workhouse 
 as a remedy. He would have the nomadic poor find a 
 "house of toil" in every parish, where unwilling hands 
 would be taught the art of wool combing, carding, and 
 spinning. His description of institutional activities is so 
 
 1 Dr. Henage Bering, Dean of Ripon, in a topographical poem 
 Reliquiae Eboracenses (before 1750) had portrayed in Latin hexa- 
 meters the activities of Roman artisans who fabricated arms and 
 weapons at Sheffield where "A thousand hearths at once intensely 
 glow." 
 
142 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 optimistic that one fails to recognize the workhouses which, 
 dating from "EHza's" reign, were hateful to an independent, 
 liberty-loving people, however poor. Although the refer- 
 ence to Queen Elizabeth would seem to indicate the tradi- 
 tional workhouse, it is sometimes difficult to know whether 
 he has in mind the newer type of workhouse called the 
 House of Industry, which was in existence in 1757, or 
 whether he is in reality thinking of the traditional institu- 
 tion and writing of it in the more attractive terms of the 
 House of Industry. 
 
 Before proceeding to a glowing account of an English 
 establishment, Dyer persuasively calls attention to the happy 
 contentment and useful lives of the inmates of a Belgian 
 workhouse. In assorting the different grades of wool that 
 grow on a single fleece, the Belgians excel all nations. 
 Why can not England, with a superior quality of fleece, 
 excel the Belgians? The moral of the example is that 
 children are able to perform the delicate task, and ought 
 therefore to be employed as they are in Belgium. He sees 
 
 e'en childhood there 
 Its little fingers turning to the toil 
 Delighted: nimbly, with habitual speed, 
 They sever lock from lock; and long from short, 
 And soft and rigid, pile in several heaps. 
 
 When, later, he turns to a ''spacious dome" in England, he 
 chooses a workhouse in the vale of Calder near Halifax. 
 His vocabulary reflects his propagandist mood: "fair pur- 
 pose," "gracious air," "gentle steps," "silent joy," "blithe," 
 "sprightly scene," "delightful mansion." Although he in- 
 sists on writing in a cheerful mood, underneath his optimism, 
 which is not superficial or insincere, is felt the force of direct 
 observation and first-hand acquaintance. He has seen 
 children at work in these houses of charity. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 143 
 
 The younger hands 
 Ply at the easy work of winding yarn 
 On swiftly circling engines, and their notes 
 Warble together, as a choir of larks ; 
 Such joy arises in the mind employed. 
 
 This is probably the earliest notice of children at work on 
 machinery outside the cottage home. Dyer's optimism is 
 inspired by the novelty and wonder that come with the 
 new direction of man's activities in group employment. 
 Under the conditions which he observed in workhouses, 
 children were still under the supervision of parents or at 
 least of friends who lived with them in the daily routine of 
 the establishment. Abuse of child labor came when chil- 
 dren were taken out of the home to the factory, where fore- 
 men or watchers, Who were interested only in amount of out- 
 put, held them mercilessly to continuous activity during long 
 hours of toil. As a result Dyer does not treat childhood as 
 offering a separate problem : children are grouped, as he 
 had observed them, with their elders. 
 
 About the time The Fleece was published, children were 
 beginning to be segregated in Houses of Indtistry. As the 
 traditional workhouses were farmed out to the lowest bid- 
 der, their management was bad. ILittle was being done to 
 educate children who were inmates. Charitable individuals, 
 and especially justices who faced deplorable conditions in 
 the routine of office, were more and more alive to the 
 evils of poverty. They also became increasingly aware of 
 the inefficiency of traditional methods of poor relief, which 
 did not strike at the root of the evil. As the problem was 
 studied by enlightened men and women, the necessity of 
 educating children to habits of neatness and industry be- 
 came evident. These reformers were in fact working in the 
 spirit of Dyer's Fleece, To supplement the efforts of the 
 workhouse, and with the aim of ultimately doing away with 
 
144 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 it altogether, Houses of Industry were erected by means of 
 individual contributions and assessments on the poor rates. 
 Wordsworth condemned their efforts in capital letters by 
 referring to these houses as "misnamed HOUSES of IN- 
 DUSTRY." But in Dyer's day they represented the most 
 enlightened sentiment of charitable men and women. Many 
 such houses were built in the sixties. And as they were in 
 existence in Lincolnshire before Dyer published The Fleece, 
 he may have had in mind one of these newer ventures in 
 the relief of poverty. The same enthusiasm that prompted 
 his fervid lines was felt by the founders of the new estab- 
 lishments. ^ 
 
 In these efforts to ameHorate social conditions through 
 the education of children to habits befitting their humble 
 station, the workhouse system was extended and modern- 
 ized to meet the needs of children. The arguments em- 
 ployed by Dyer were used repeatedly in favor of the house 
 of indust'r}^ for fifty years after the Fleece.'^ The differences 
 are those of emphasis. Later writers of pamphlets, al- 
 though envisaging the problem as a whole, were especially 
 concerned with childhood. 
 
 Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, which appeared thir- 
 teen years after The Fleece, develops sentimentally the 
 theme of the evils of luxury as reflected in unjust oppres- 
 sion of the poor. Goldsmith sees the evil effects of en- 
 closures of land to form new estates or to extend the old. 
 As in sweet Auburn, familiar landmarks were often ruth- 
 lessly razed merely to make way for a prospect.^ His at- 
 tack on the misuse of wealth is veiled by the sentiment which 
 
 1 Sarah Trimmer, Oecoiwmy of Chanty, 1787-1801 (edition 
 1801), and Thomas Ruggles, History of the Poor (edition 1794). 
 
 - Dyer and later writers may have been indebted to Locke's 
 scheme of "Working Schools." 
 
 3 Compare Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 145 
 
 colors his reminiscent pictures of happy village life under old 
 conditions. This weakens the force of the poem for social 
 reform. From the time of its publication, readers have 
 overlooked, in favor of the delightful reminiscence of a 
 happy village life, the terrible social injustice which the 
 poet recognizes as an historical fact.^ 
 
 Although the misuse of power over helpless cottagers 
 is not blinked, Goldsmith is careful to choose imagery that 
 will not offend; harsh reality, where it threatens to break 
 through, is prettily sentimentalized. The literary effect of 
 the poem is accentuated by the fact that the reader is al- 
 lowed to look upon village woes only as transmuted by the 
 personality of the poet, who is kept in the foreground, and 
 with whose personal woes the reader is made to sympathize. 
 Goldsmith allows the reader to see only a happy childhood. 
 He is sad, but the imagery drawn from childhood is pleas- 
 ing. Children are at play on the green ; they pluck affec- 
 tionately at the gown of the village preacher ; they laugh 
 at the jokes and fear the frowns of the village schoolmaster. 
 The poet's melting mood of unhappiness may sadden his 
 recollection of childhood delights that can no longer be 
 observed in villages which have been blotted from the 
 landscape by a wealthy landowner; but the poetic sadness 
 is not vigorous enough to counterbalance the idyllic mood 
 in which the images of childhood are conceived. 
 
 In his choice of theme, if not in its development. Gold- 
 smith does bear witness to the increased hardship suffered 
 by children of the poor.- If the poem is read in the light 
 
 ^ For a fuller account of this phase of The Deserted Village, 
 see The English Village, by Julia Patton. 
 
 2 The Poor Mans Prayer by the Rev. Dr. Roberts of Eton 
 definitely connects the suffering of cottagers and their children with 
 the "tyrant lord" who, "armed with cruel Law's coercive power," 
 evicts them. 
 
146 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 of historical events which justify his sadness, the forgotten 
 lines, which are not idyllic, take on a new significance. 
 
 Another poem, which was published thirteen years after 
 The Deserted Village, and which was inspired by the kind 
 of literary glozing found in Goldsmith's poem, supplies the 
 ugly details which Goldsmith pictured only indirectly, and 
 to which Dyer referred only in passing. Crabbe's The Vil- 
 lage (1783) shows the facts of village life as they had 
 appeared only incidentally in poetry. Although Scott of 
 Amwell used the image of children playing with toy boats 
 in the kennel's dirty tide, he belongs with Goldsmith to the 
 school of poets who preferred to observe the pleasant fea- 
 tures of village life. In a letter to Beattie, Scott is queru- 
 lous over the realism of Crabbe's The Village. "The au- 
 thor of "The Village" takes the dark side of the question: 
 he paints all with a sombre pencil; too justly, perhaps, but, 
 to me at least, unpleasingly. We know there is no unmixed 
 happiness in any state of life ; but one does not wish to be 
 perpetually told so." 
 
 Crabbe is able to amplify the brutal facts which lie at the 
 roots of Dyer's problem ; but unlike the earlier poet, he is 
 negative in that he suggests no specific remedy for social ills. 
 The Village merely lays bare the repulsive conditions he ob- 
 served in his boyhood haunts in and about the seaside 
 village of Aldborough. He is impatient of pastoralities. 
 When he sees the mid-day sun beating down on the bare 
 heads of harvesters, he does not hide the grim realities of 
 toil in "tinsel trappings." He will paint the cottage "as 
 truth will paint it, and as bards will not." Poverty can 
 not soothe the poor who pine for bread. Corydons still 
 complain in poetry, but only of the pains which they never 
 feel. In the grim actualities of contemporary life, peasants 
 have had to leave their oaten reeds to follow the plough in 
 a niggardly soil. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 147 
 
 There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, 
 And to the rugged infant threaten war. 
 
 Children and young folk do not play at rural games on the 
 green. He cannot find there the simple life of nature : ''Ra- 
 pine and Wrong and Fear usurped her place." Crabbe fled 
 as soon as he could from his native Aldborough, where 
 **guilt and famine reign." There nature was not friendly 
 to man. The aged worker in the fields looks up to behold 
 
 The bare arms broken from the withering tree, 
 On which, a boy, he climbed the highest bough, 
 Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now. 
 
 Let him who dreams of rural ease and picturesque cottages, 
 look within the cottages of the poor, and see children "round 
 their feeble fire." They must be satisfied with a "stinted 
 meal." Hardship drives many to poaching for food, and 
 liquor causes brawls at inns where the father's weekly wage 
 has been squandered. The drunken husband reels home to 
 strike his "teeming mate." 
 
 Crabbe's poetry was influential in rousing people to the 
 need of reform: excerpts from The Village were widely 
 read by impressionable children in "Elegant Extracts" and 
 "Poetical Extracts," which were used in the schools. Sir 
 Walter Scott and Wordsworth were profoundly moved by 
 his lines. Wordsworth wrote to Crabbe's son : "They will 
 last, from their combined merits as Poetry and Truth, full 
 as long as anything that has been expressed in verse since 
 they first made their appearance." Crabbe is not writing in 
 the mood of Dyer, so that in his workhouse the cheerful hum 
 of wheels has become a mournful drone to the accompani- 
 ment of which there can be no voices of happy children 
 singing like larks. Within its mud walls, and in the putrid 
 vapors of unventilated rooms, 
 
148 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 There children dwell who know no parent's care; 
 Parents who know no children's love, dwell there. 
 Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, 
 Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; 
 Dejected widows with unheeded tears, 
 And crippled age with more than childhood fears. ^ 
 
 In The Introduction to the Parish Register (1807) Crab- 
 be writes with greater minuteness and detail of the back- 
 ground portrayed in a general way in The Village. As he 
 explores the annals of his parish poor, he fails to find 
 records that suggest happy Eden or sweet Auburn in the 
 want that keeps sunshine from the cottage gate. In the 
 same year that Wordsworth published the Intimations Ode, 
 Crabbe took as his theme the vice and misery of the "infected 
 Row we term our street." There the sot, cheat, and shrew 
 met each evening to dispute and riot ; there one could nightly 
 hear 
 
 the curse, the cries 
 Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies; 
 While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, 
 And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand : 
 Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin. 
 And girls, who heed not dress, are skilled in gin. 
 
 1 Compare the lines in The Parish Register : 
 
 Back to their homes the prudent vestry went. 
 And Richard Monday to the workhouse sent. 
 There he was pinched and pitied, thumped, and fed. 
 And duly took his beatings and his bread; 
 Patient in all control, in all abuse, 
 He found contempt and kicking have their use : 
 Sad, silent, supple; bending to the blow, 
 A slave of slaves, the lowest of the low; 
 
 His were the legs that ran at all commands; 
 They used on all occasions Richard's hands : 
 His very soul was not his own. . . . 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 149 
 
 Amid sweepings from the door lie mingled masses of 
 putrefying matter, into which sinks "disembogue" and 
 through which kennels flow. 
 
 There hungry dogs from hungry children steal ; 
 There pigs and chickens quarrel for a meal ; 
 There dropsied infants wail without redress, 
 And all is want and wo and wretchedness. 
 
 Crabbe wonders if the boys with bare bodies hardened and 
 bronzed by the sun will "outlive the lack of care" ; they will, 
 if they can be forced to work on a farm. More degrading 
 are the sleeping quarters where the beds are crowded into 
 a single room : 
 
 Daughters and sons to yon compartments creep. 
 And parents here beside their children sleep. 
 
 Sanitation is not known in such hovels. The gentle reader 
 must endure, for the "true physician walks the foulest 
 wards." There are frowsy patches on the floor, and there 
 is downy dust beneath the window and round the posts of 
 the bed on which lie tattered garments. 
 
 See ! as we gaze, an infant lifts its head, 
 Left by neglect and burrowed in that bed. 
 
 In 1785 Cowper, in his evangelical fervor, already bore 
 witness to drunken brawls that disturbed the quiet of his 
 country retreat on the banks of the Ouse, and noticed in 
 The Task the drunken cottager who starved his children by 
 squandering his wage at the village inn. In 1794 Blake's 
 Songs of Experience depicted in The Little Vagabond a 
 child who appeals to his mother by protesting that the 
 church is cold but that the ale-house is warm and cheerful. ^ 
 
 1 The liquor problem in connection with incidental notice of 
 childhood has been frequently noted in prose, and sometimes in 
 verse. For prose, Defoe's Colonel Jacques is interesting. For 
 poetry, in addition to passages already noted, there are : Edward 
 
150 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The eighties saw an unparalleled outburst of reform 
 activities. Hannah More's Sensibility reveals clearly how 
 sentimentalism was giving way to more practical consider- 
 ations that are implied in Crabbe's willingness to see con- 
 ditions as they exist. Sentimental poems and plays, and the 
 sentimental attitude toward animals, had prepared the way 
 for practical reforms in the interests of children ; but merely 
 literary sentiment is no longer justified in the face of man's 
 realization of social conditions that appeal to the heart for 
 practical reforms. The "graceful drapery Feeling wears," 
 no longer satisfies the longings of those who wish to be of 
 service to ill-conditioned children. Hannah More is out of 
 patience with one 
 
 Who thinks feigned sorrows all her tears deserve, 
 And weeps o'er Werther while her children starve. 
 
 Sarah Trimmer published her O economy of Charity in 
 its first form in 1787. Hannah More's Mendip Annals, 
 which bears witness to her charitable work among the 
 wretched cottagers of the Cheddar district, dates from the 
 same period. Ruggles's History of the Poor reviews con- 
 ditions from the sixties to the nineties in an effort to 
 awaken the charitable instincts of Englishmen. It is not 
 necessary to go to these prose sources for a portrayal of 
 spiritual neglect that stimulated the efforts of Raikes and 
 his followers in the Sunday School movement in the eighth 
 decade, for Crabbe's fierce light had been focused on the 
 abuses of the church in 1783. Village children suspend 
 their games to view the funeral of their aged friend, but the 
 mourners wait in vain until evening beside the grave. The 
 busy priest is detained by weightier matters, and the poor 
 
 Moore's The Oivl and the Nightingale; Mickle's Syr Martyn; Mac- 
 neill's whiskey ballad Will and Jean; and the early A di<ilog Be- 
 tween a Butcher and his Wife, after his return from the Ale-House. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 151 
 
 man's bones lie unblest. Hannah More found at Cheddar 
 that the cottagers were all but totally neglected by the es- 
 tablished church. Among the miners and. glass workers 
 of the Mendips she and her sister Patty observed children 
 as wretched as those of AFdborough. 
 
 Raikes had to meet vigorous opposition, and Hannah 
 More was thwarted at every turn by obstructionist policies. 
 In the welter of social unrest that accompanied the Revolu- 
 tion, conservative or reactionary opinion was suspicious of 
 all innovations. Men feared that the efforts of most chari- 
 table organizations were somehow bound up with Revolu- 
 tionary propaganda, and broadly classified them as part and 
 parcel of Revolutionary activities. It was feared also that 
 Hannah More's plan would raise children above their natural 
 social level and make them unfit as hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water. It is known, for instance, from her 
 journals and other sources, that some reformers doubted 
 the wisdom of teaching children even to read, because read- 
 ing might make them unfit servants. ^ Wordsworth, who 
 was a friend of children always, was moved in 1815 to 
 protest against "systems which cramped childhood and held 
 it artificially in restraint within the economic barriers set 
 up as a result of class distinction." It is easy to see how 
 his rugged mountain nature, bred even in school at Hawkes- 
 head to freedom from close supervision, was temperamen- 
 tally opposed to anything short of an equal opportunity for 
 all English children. 
 
 Wordsworth, who insisted that freedom is the birthright 
 of children, could not sympathize with a system that took the 
 child as soon as the mother could spare him, and placed him 
 
 1 A rich Cheddar farmer assured Hannah More that religion 
 would be the ruin of agriculture, although he conceded that religion 
 might be a good thing if it would keep children from robbing or- 
 chards. (Mendip Annals.) 
 
152 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 in a House of Industry. Rugg^les notes varying ages as 
 low as three years, and repeatedly refers to children of five 
 and six who assisted at the work of spinning. It must be 
 remembered that Dyer's enthusiasm for the employment of 
 children meant long hours from six in the morning to 
 seven at night in summer, and eight in winter. A school- 
 mistress was employed to supervise the youngest children, 
 and a master to teach the boys for an hour during the day. 
 The long hours of supervised routine must have been dead- 
 ening in their influence on spontaneous child nature, and 
 the aim of teaching children machine-like habits of regular- 
 ity was no doubt realized. The only variety to which boys 
 might look forward was seasonal work in the fields. They 
 were able to drill at planting time, or to assist at harvest. 
 One's heart prompts the wish that there were many pre- 
 datory wild birds near houses of industry, for it does the 
 heart good to know that the little boys, who were being con- 
 verted into automatons, were hired out to scare birds from 
 the newly-planted fields and orchards. What a relief from 
 dreary routine that lasted from sunrise to sunset — and 
 after! In Dyer's time, and later to the days of Lancaster 
 and Bell, houses of industry were, nevertheless, the expres- 
 sion of an honest effort to rescue children from conditions 
 such as the poets have depicted. 
 
 Even in the houses of industry, however, there is to be 
 noted a tendency to the exploitation of child labor. The 
 unfortunate element lies in the fact that the work of chil- 
 dren was expected to pay expenses "with an overplus." 
 This expectation would easily lead to forcing the efforts of 
 children, ''as much work being required of each of them as 
 they are reasonably to perform. ... In conformity to the 
 plans of our society, children from five or six years of age 
 are assembled under the same roof, at an early and regular 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 153 
 
 hour of the morning, kept steadily to the purpose of busi- 
 ness — taught that, even so early in life, they are able to main- 
 fain themselves." Like Dyer in 1757, Ruggles is concerned 
 with increasing the wealth of the kingdom. 
 
 Sarah Trimmer, too, concerned as she is primarily with 
 religious aspects of the child's welfare, falls nevertheless 
 into the habit of computing the money value of work done 
 by children. If only ten persons in each of the ten thou- 
 sand parishes of England and Wales earned no more than 
 a halfpenny a day for three hundred days in the year," the 
 produce of their labor would at the year's end amount to 
 62,500 pounds" ; and she notes that "the girls of the Found- 
 ling Hospital under their present excellent matron, earn one 
 hundred pounds a year." She would, therefore, set all idle 
 children to profitable employment, adducing the example of 
 thrifty Dutch children who earn their keep and more by 
 making toys, "which serves as an amusement, as well as a 
 profitable employment." 
 
 She describes a charitable institution which is a modi- 
 fication of the House of Industry. In the Day School of 
 Industry, the promiscuous mingling of adults and children, 
 which had led to overcrowding and resulting abuses, was 
 eliminated. As soon as charity workers realized that in- 
 dustrial life as represented in the House of Industry would 
 destroy all sense of domestic life, day schools were urged for 
 all except the wretchedly poor and orphans : "children com- 
 monly receive more harm than good, by being mixed to- 
 gether with men and women, and this is too much the case 
 in Parish Workhouses." That the houses of industry were 
 but one degree removed from these is evident from Ruggles, 
 who observed that "the dormitory is too much crowded ; 
 three or four boys in a bed, two men ; this number in one bed 
 occasioned the air to be disagreeable to the smell." 
 
154 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Although one may be tempted to ascribe Chatterton's 
 Hnes on cottage discomforts to Hterary heightening, Rug- 
 gles gives evidence of the naked truth of the poet's concep- 
 tion, in a report of his visit to a sick cottager in whose 
 household the cramped space precluded separation of chil- 
 dren from adults, and the well from the sick. ^ He lays this 
 to "that miserable economy in fitting up the cottage, which 
 too generally has denied the only bed room, either a fire- 
 place, or a casement window to ventilate the air; the noise 
 of querulous children ; the stench of confined air, rendered 
 epidemic by morbid effluvia ; the vermin too frequently 
 swarming on the bodies and rags of the wretched inhabi- 
 tants," such causes indicate a "depth of misery which hard 
 labor and industry ought not in sickness to be liable to en- 
 dure." The lines in Crabbe's The Parish Register read al- 
 most like a poetic version of such a passage. Crabbe sees 
 as the chief cause of all this misery of children the mother's 
 inability to "employ the vacant hour." In poets as in prose 
 writers, remedial measures are almost invariably bound up 
 with the thought of the spinning and weaving industry which 
 Dyer had advocated as the salvation of the poor. The in- 
 tolerable conditions from which Crabbe's children suffer are 
 brought about by lack of thrift. 
 
 Here are no wheels for either wool or flax, 
 But packs of cards — made up of sundry packs. 
 
 The aims and methods of teaching in the day school 
 were the same as in the school of industry. The main in- 
 terest lay in teaching manual work and regularity of habits. 
 Children were taught in rotation for one hour each day to 
 
 1 In a glass-blowing district, Hannah and Patty More entered 
 a row of hovels, nineteen containing two hundred people — "both 
 sexes and all ages herding together." (Mendip Annals.) 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 
 
 155 
 
 read the Bible and the Prayer Book. Referring to other 
 studies, Sarah Trimmer held that there is no ''absolute 
 necessity for children of the lower order to learn these 
 things at all." She excepts the ability to read the Bible, 
 "for I regard it as a part of the Birthright of the Poor as 
 Britons, to read the BIBLE in their native language; and 
 esteem it the duty of their supervisors to see, at least, that 
 they are enabled to do it." But the main purpose was to 
 teach manual occupation. An ambitious boy was able under 
 this system to rise to the position of head weaver at ten 
 years of age, and after fulfilling the institutional require- 
 ment of teaching a successor, was entrusted with a position 
 of responsibility in a manufactory, at an age when boys 
 were as a rule first apprenticed. 
 
 Such charitable efiforts in foundling hospitals, schools of 
 industry, and day schools of industry may not conform to 
 present-day aims and ideals in humanitarian relief ; but when 
 studied in the light of factory employment of children, it 
 will be realized that children in such institutions were in 
 snug harbor: protected on the one hand from filthy moral 
 and physical home conditions, and on the other from heart- 
 less industrial exploitation. 
 
 Ruggles reports of manufactories that "a sacrifice of 
 health and morals is made ... to pecuniary advantages. 
 The children are crowded in close apartments, without any 
 regard to their improvement, excepting in one particular 
 branch of the Manufactory, for which probably their size 
 will disqualify them after a few years, when they must give 
 place to smaller children, and turn into the world unacquaint- 
 ed with any art, by which they may gain a future livelihood, 
 and if they are females, ignorant of even the use of the 
 needle, so necessary to be known by every wife and mother 
 
156 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 in the lower ranks of life." ^ Children did literally outgrow 
 their jobs. The machines operated to advantage by them 
 stood so near the floor that when the child had grown, 
 he had made himself unfit for his work. 
 
 The numerous publications which make up the nineteen 
 volumes of Hannah More's collected works indicate the 
 class distinction which dominated all efforts at social relief. 
 She wrote a well-received book for the education of a 
 princess. Her stories for common folk were carefully di- 
 vided into volumes whose titles indicate their clearly-defined 
 audience. The conservative tendency of all labors in the 
 interests of the poor is further emphasized by her Village 
 Politics, which was highly praised by Walpole. It is a 
 dialogue between Jack Anvil, the blacksmith, and Tom 
 Hood, the mason, and was written to counteract Revolu- 
 tionary principles which were making serious headway 
 among the discontented poor. Addressed by Will Chip, 
 a country carpenter, to all the mechanics, journeymen, and 
 laborers in Great Britain, it had tremendous vogue in its 
 day, and served its purpose in counteracting the subversive 
 pamphlets and tracts that had found their way into work- 
 shops and coal-pits. The language was adapted to the 
 class of readers it intended to reach. Her ballads, com- 
 posed with the intent of answering the "foolish question" 
 (which was often heard in labor circles during the Great 
 War) "What have the POOR to lose?" in case of a 
 French invasion, contain the likable Ploughman s Ditty. It 
 is obviously propagandist in its idealization of cottage life, 
 and hardly represents faithfully the class of wretchedly poor 
 
 ^ White's Clifton Grove : 
 
 The pale mechanic leaves the laboring loom, 
 The air-pent hold, the pestilential room. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 157 
 
 peasants with whom she was concerned in her charity 
 work. She uses the return at eve of the father, together 
 with an ''atrocity" accompaniment: 
 
 On Saturday-night 
 
 'Tis still my delight, 
 With my wages to run home the faster ; 
 
 But if Frenchmen rule here, 
 
 I may look far and near, 
 But I never shall find a paymaster. 
 
 I've a dear little wife. 
 
 Whom I love as my life; 
 To lose her I shouldn't much like. Sir; 
 
 And 'twou'd make me run wild 
 
 To see my sweet child 
 With its head on the point of a pike, Sir. 
 
 Among Sarah Trimmer's many examples of wretched- 
 ness and suffering, it is pleasant to read of the thrifty widow 
 of Hasketon, in the County of Suffolk, who, upon the death 
 of her husband in 1779, was left with fourteen children, 
 the eldest fourteen years old. 'Going over the head of fac- 
 tors and rent collectors, she persuaded John Way, Esq., 
 her landlord, to allow her to continue as cottager tenant at a 
 rent of thirteen pounds a year. She refused to part with 
 any of her children to a house of industry, and by the sale 
 of milk, butter, and cheese from two cows, saw all her 
 children either well placed in service or married to thrifty 
 husbandmen. By training her eldest daughter to care for 
 the younger children while she herself was selling her pro- 
 duce in the nearest market town of Waybridge, two miles 
 distant, she had managed her brood so well that she could 
 finally leave her cottage labor at the age of fifty-five years 
 to take up the less arduous employment of nursing. 
 
158 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Such details of a happy ending to what in most instances 
 would have been a calamity, give the reader of eighteenth- 
 century poetry greater confidence in the sincerity of poets 
 whose lines contain what may often seem to be a colorless 
 reference to widows and orphans. The widow of Hasketon 
 was one of the exceptions to general suffering because she 
 secured a sympathetic hearing from the master over the 
 heads of his agents. In the main, readers of poetry had 
 come into contact with actual scenes of suffering which 
 would make their hearts responsive to the poet's lines on 
 benevolence. Such conditions, as is evident from the pub- 
 lications and reports of poor-relief societies, were faithfully 
 portrayed by Crabbe. Conditions at Aldborough were es- 
 sentially like those at Cheddar, both as regards physical 
 squalor and spiritual atrophy. 
 
 Although Thomson's sympathy with suffering cottage 
 children is as lively as that of Southey and Crabbe, he differs 
 from poets like Dyer and Langhorne in that he seems like 
 Cowper to be satisfied with alms and public institutions 
 as the proper methods of ameliorating the condition of chil- 
 dren. He appeals to man's sense of justice to relieve suf- 
 fering humanity from the injustice which man works on his 
 fellow man. 
 
 After the middle of the century, Dyer and Langhorne 
 write in the spirit of the reforms advocated by Raikes, Mrs. 
 Trimmer, and Hannah More. Where sentimentalism ended 
 in an escape from the haunts of man, as in Bruce and Beat- 
 tie, ^ and where it tended to throw a misty veil of sentiment 
 over cruel facts, as in The Deserted Village and The Cot- 
 ter's Saturday-Night, the deep sympathy of Dyer and Lang- 
 horne led to specific programs of reform that had as their 
 
 1 Compare Lavina and Edwin. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE POOR 159 
 
 object the removal of the causes of poverty. Dyer had ad- 
 vocated teaching the child habits of thrift and patient appli- 
 cation as shields against intemperance and shiftlessness that 
 bring suffering in their train. Langhorne was also working 
 for the removal of the primary causes of misfortune when 
 he appealed for an intelligent administration of the law. 
 
 By way of the Sunday School, Raikes struck at the root 
 of the problem ; and Hannah More, who left London salons 
 and bluestockings for the children of miners and glaziers 
 at Cheddar, held to fundamentals in her efforts to give 
 them the benefits of the only vocational guidance known to 
 the eighteenth century. 
 
 When applied to children in relation to their environ- 
 ment, Crabbe's accusation that poets ignored actual condi- 
 tions in favor of pastoralities, is not altogether accurate, 
 unless the industrial abuses of child labor, which Crabbe 
 himself did not notice, are included. Through their op- 
 timistic philosophy, sentimental poets were attracted by 
 those elements in rural life which contrasted with the ob- 
 vious vice and artificialities of city life. The charming pic- 
 tures of cottage contentment and rural felicity to be found 
 in poetry that notices childhood, must not obscure the fact 
 that the benevolists were awake to actual conditions of suf- 
 fering and poverty even in rural communities. The most 
 idyllic of the cottage motives, the return at eve of the father 
 after a day of labor, is most often pitched in a minor key. 
 Even in The Cotter s Saturday-Night, where all is well 
 with the children of the household. Burns has saddening 
 premonitions of a change coming over the simple cottage 
 life of his beloved Scotia. 'In the face of protests from 
 Thomson to Burns, it cannot with justice be said that con- 
 ditions under which children lived were not noticed by 
 poets. Dyer's enthusiasm for his program of industrious 
 
160 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 habits as the remedy for the ills of poverty, led him to 
 advocate child labor in the spinning industry as carried 
 on in public institutions. Children employed in organized 
 industry had to wait until Grahame's Birds of Scotland and 
 Wordsworth's The Excursion for poets who championed 
 their cause, many years before Mrs. Browning wrote The 
 Cry of the Children. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EDUCATION 
 
 But thanks to those, whose fond parental care 
 
 To Learning's paths my youthful steps confined, 
 
 I need not shun a state which lets me share 
 
 Each calm delight that soothes the studious mind. 
 Thomas Cole, Ode to Contentment. 
 
 As reflected in poetry, the history of education in the 
 eighteenth century begins and ends with the conflict between 
 the traditional methods of classical education and the utili- 
 tarian training advocated by John Locke and his disciples. 
 A persistent attack on ''cell-bred" discipline is revealed in 
 poetry from Pope's Dimciad to Cowper's Tirocinium. After 
 1762, Rousseau's entTiusiasm added impetus to the already 
 widely disseminated doctrines of Locke. Poetic discussion 
 of the moral aspects of education for children was influenced 
 by the evangelical fervor of Whitefield and the Wesleys. 
 
 The combined influences of Locke, Rousseau, the senti- 
 mentalists, and those inspired by religious fervor, operated 
 to break down the traditional curriculum and the methods 
 by which it was administered. Poets are agreed with Locke 
 and Rousseau in their stated preference for domestic edu- 
 cation. They reflect also the widening interest in natural 
 science, which went hand in hand with utilitarian propa- 
 ganda. The violent attacks on established methods are 
 essentially democratic in tendency in that they imply modi- 
 fications to meet the needs of the masses in a closer approach 
 to utilitarian standards. The desire to substitute for the tra- 
 ditional memoriter exercises a real knowledge derived from 
 
162 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 direct observation of natural phenomena, ranges poets 
 on the side of those who insisted that the child should be 
 taught by observation of objects in nature. Although their 
 attacks produced few tangible results in the established 
 schools, in that they did not make themselves felt in the 
 classical curriculum at all, popularization and simplification 
 of text-books on arithmetic, geography, grammar, and na- 
 tural history reflect a growing desire to meet popular needs. 
 That the eighteenth century was mainly a period of transi- 
 tion and preparation is clear from a study of poetry from 
 Pope to Cowper. 
 
 The instinctive objection to disciplinary education voiced 
 by the early romanticist poets was occasionally rein- 
 forced by satirical thrusts of poets who belong to the 
 classicist tradition. Sir J. H. Moore's Written in a College 
 Library gives a satirical picture of the somnolent state of 
 higher education. The poet has often seen an "ancient 
 fellow" who, ''free from the cares of children, noise, and 
 wife," enjoyed smooth moments which are not tokens of a 
 vigorous activity in educational affairs. ^ Although John 
 Gilbert Cooper had been a pupil of Dr. Nicholls at West- 
 minster, and evidently a close student of the classics at 
 Cambridge, he preferred "contentment's humble lot" to 
 the artificialities of court and school. His Epistles (to his 
 friends in toivn, from Aristippns, in retirement, 1/38) are 
 unfavorable to schools. He prefers the guidance of his 
 heart to the head work of pedants. His point of view is 
 indicated by such phrases as "bookish rules," "hard with a 
 comment's iron chain," "figures and bloated tropes," "three- 
 legged syllogisms," "the bubble blowing race," and "grave 
 pedantic train." 
 
 1 Compare the Autobiography of Gibbon, passim, for conditions 
 at Oxford. 
 
EDUCATION 163 
 
 Among the early romanticists, impatience of restraint is 
 voiced in the extreme language of Chatterton, who looks 
 upon the pedant as the "licensed butcher of the human 
 mind," and who in Happiness (1770) makes the sweeping 
 accusation, 
 
 O Education, ever in the wrong, 
 
 To thee the curses of mankind belong. 
 
 Mickle glories in the uncontrolled impulses unknown to 
 the victims of ''schooltaught prudence and its maxims cold." 
 As he treads "Cintra's summits" and views the scene where 
 the Saracen was conquered, he prefers the vague glow with 
 which the locality, "of name unknown," suffuses his soul. 
 He feels in chivalry the dynamic power of the ideal. In 
 Knozi'ledge (1761) he scales down intellect in favor of 
 emotion by scorning "lettered pride" and the boastful claims 
 of "star-crowned science." Sages stray and grope in end- 
 less night: they can never be certain of their conclusions. 
 He decides to pay "silent adoration" and to be "in wonder 
 lost." Mason holds that education will serve but to "chill 
 affection's native fires." Knowledge beyond what is neces- 
 sary to save the individual from vice, will only multiply 
 his cares. School routine was also uncongenial because it 
 interfered with the free romantic development of individu- 
 ality. Bruce's school girl, Lavina, was solitary in her habits. 
 Beattie is unfavorable to formal instruction when he does 
 not wish to mope over the schoolman's "peevish page," and 
 exclaims, 
 
 Perish the lore that deadens young desire. 
 
 Instances might be multiplied, but it is clear that romantic 
 tendencies were in a vague way opposed to organized edu- 
 cation. Poets preferred not to endure the restraint of 
 school life ; confinement was irksome to the spirit which 
 vaguely prompted their love of freedom. 
 
164 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Yet there is in Thomson's Liberty (Part III) a striking 
 passage which indicates that it is better for the schoolboy 
 not to be troubled by gleams of the ideal. Thomson argues 
 that if man rose to a glimpse of ideal beauty, he would 
 shrink up like a flower before the mid-day sun. The ce- 
 lestial regions to which Liberty retired after the decadence 
 of Roman liberty are too bright to be viewed by man. The 
 light is too keen for mortals ; therefore, says Thomson, 
 sacred be the veil that clouds the light. It is curious that 
 Thomson, precursor as he is in so many ways of romantic 
 tendencies, should have applied this thought to childhood. 
 
 A sense of higher life would only damp 
 The schoolboy's task, and spoil his playful hours. 
 Nor could the child of Reason, feeble man, 
 With vigour through his infant being drudge, 
 Did brighter worlds, their unimagined bliss 
 Disclosing, dazzle and dissolve his mind. 
 
 The romanticists were ever trying to break through the 
 literal fact to the spiritual meaning which it veiled. Words- 
 worth gloried in the fact that as a schoolboy at Hawkeshead 
 he was "disturbed" by gleams of divine truth. It is evident, 
 however, that as far as childhood is in his mind, Thomson 
 was not ready to advocate romantic emotions that would set 
 the child apart from his fellows because of a faculty of 
 spiritual vision that made him "an eye among the blind." 
 
 There was little danger that the curriculum of eighteenth- 
 century schools would develop mystic insight into a realm of 
 romantic spirituality. The curriculum, in so far as it was 
 noticed by poets, was condemned as lacking in the spirit 
 that gives vitality to education. The general accusation 
 was that schools emphasized the letter to the exclusion of 
 the spirit. In the Dunciad, Pope conceives the goddess of 
 Dullness as sending "Stupefaction mild" to every pupil. 
 
EDUCATION 165 
 
 Education made no attempt to impart real knowledge ; but 
 instead, 
 
 Beneath her footstool science groans in chains. (IV) 
 
 When Pope arraigns pedagogical methods in the fourth 
 book of the Dunciad, he has in mind endowed schools, such 
 as Winchester, Eton, and Westminster, which he specifically 
 mentions. Schools of this type were on foundations that 
 date back as far as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 By the eighteenth century they were open only to sons of 
 the nobility and the wealthy class. The curriculum was 
 essentially the same as that intended for boys at the time of 
 the Reformation. The course was based on Latin and 
 Greek. Its ideals were disciplinary : the teaching had lost 
 touch with life. During the seventeenth century, with the 
 advent of natural science and the inductive philosophy of 
 Bacon, there had been protests against exclusive attention to 
 classical learning. Milton's letter to Hartlib had empha- 
 sized the need of correlating the curriculum with the 
 practical demands of life. Locke's Thoughts (1693), al- 
 though cautious in not condemning Latin and Greek out- 
 right, outlined a practical regimen for sons who were 
 to be leaders in public life. ^ The objective was practical 
 usefulness. 
 
 Pope catches the spirit of these writers in his ridicule of 
 the conventional instruction given in endowed schools. The 
 pedagogue argues before the throne of Dullness, that since 
 man is distinguished from brutes by words, words are 
 man's province. Therefore 'Words we teach alone." The 
 narrower way is always preferred in his system. Placed to 
 guide youth at the door of learning, he never suffers it to 
 
 1 Locke would have Greek studied by professional scholars 
 only. 
 
166 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 "stand too wide." As soon as a boy shows signs of mental 
 awakening by asking questions, 
 
 We ply the memory, we load the brain, 
 
 Bind rebel wit, and double chain on chain. 
 
 Confine the thought, to exercise the breath, 
 
 And keep them in the pale of Words till death. 
 
 Whate'er the talents, or howe'er designed, 
 
 We hang one jingling padlock on the mind. (IV) 
 
 The footnote informs the reader that these lines are "A re- 
 capitulation of the whole course of modern education . . . 
 which confines Youth to the study of Words only in 
 Schools." When a pupil shows an inclination toward in- 
 vestigation in natural science, the pedagogue turns the 
 child's interest to trifles — makes of him a virtuoso. The 
 "P. W." footnote states that Dullness is careful to charge 
 the "Investigators of Nature to amuse themselves in trifles, 
 and rest in second causes, with a total disregard of the first." 
 The result of this slavery to words is a ''trifling head and a 
 contracted heart." 
 
 When there was danger of innovation in high places in 
 the educational world, a sable shoal of "broad hats, and 
 hoods, and caps" circled about Dullness and, as friends of 
 Aristotle, championed traditional learning. As a matter of 
 fact, the heads of the University of Oxford met in 1703 to 
 censure Locke's Essay of Human Understanding, and to 
 forbid its being read. The tremendous yawn of Dullness, 
 which infects all the court, is explained to mean the schools, 
 where, "though the boys are unwilling to sleep, the Masters 
 are not." Yet in the face of such protests from Pope, the 
 schoolboy was destined to continue "of painful pedantry 
 the poring child." 
 
 Gilbert West's Education (1751) is an imitation of the 
 form and diction of Spenser's Faerie Queene, and reflects the 
 opinions of Locke on education. In fact, Locke in the guise 
 
EDUCATION 167 I 
 
 of a palmer conducts the children of the Fairy Knight 
 through the kingdom of Custom to ''Paedia's house." Their 
 adventures in the domain of the fierce giant Custom, and 
 their arrival in the valley where Paedia lies asleep, consti- 
 tute the narrative with which West has bound up his attack 
 on the classical curriculum. Alluding to Locke's preoccu- 
 pation in Thoughts with the earliest stages of childhood, 
 West praises the eminent philosopher for holding up his 
 "faithful light" before the uncertain feet of children. 
 
 Ne with the glorious gifts elate and vain 
 Lock'd he his wisdom up in churlish pride; 
 But, stooping from his height, would even deign 
 The feeble steps of infancy to guide. 
 
 During their wanderings in search of Education, the 
 pilgrims come to a roaring flood stained by "infant gore." 
 Beside it stands a "birchen grove" that with "its bitter 
 juice empoisoned all the flood." After fording this cruel 
 stream into which children were being lashed ("By nurses, 
 guardians, fathers, dragged along"), they come to a land- 
 scaped garden which is the seat of Learning. Nine virgins 
 who sit there in "mimic majesty" preside over "every learned 
 school." They affect antiquities even in their dress, are 
 blind to the charms of modern knowledge, and scorn the 
 language of their country. They mourn over the "rubbish 
 of Rome and Athens," gathering up each little scrap, "how- 
 ever foul or torn." They are so enamoured of antiquity that 
 
 Ne sacred Truth herself would they embrace, 
 Unwarranted, unknown in their forefathers' days. 
 
 They are vassals of the giant Custom, who endeavors to 
 take in the knight's son. In place of the usual compliance 
 the knight attacks the giant. Hard pressed, Custom sum- 
 mons his followers, who are fainthearted and timorous- 
 minded at best. He had trained them from infancy to "hug 
 
168 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 his chain" ; he had craftily persuaded them to revere both 
 the good and the noxious, the rational and the vain, as 'in- 
 stitutions sage and venerable." Therefore they were seized 
 with terror at sight of the knight and his children, 
 
 Attended by that palmer sage and bold, 
 Whose venturous search of devious truth whilere 
 Spread through the realms of Learning horrour drear, 
 Y-seized were at first with terrours great; 
 And in their boding hearts began to fear, 
 Dissentions factious, controversial hate, 
 And innovations strange in Custom's peaceful state. 
 
 The knight and his train are hissed as they ride on in their 
 survey of the domains of Custom, where the knight could 
 observe nothing sound or wholesome. Although he saw that 
 Custom's vassals declined the "wine-stained board Of 
 beastly Comus," they had nevertheless resigned their hearts 
 to idle joys. 
 
 As the knight would not have his son breathe even this 
 "sweet contagion," he turned aside from the beaten paths 
 to a majestic mountain on the side of which is a thickly- 
 shaded grove. There the light was mellow, as though the 
 sun's rays had passed "Through windows dim with holy 
 arts pourtrayed." They came upon a venerable matron, 
 asleep, whom the knight addresses as "fair island queen" 
 and "mother of heroes," and who is none other than Paedia. 
 Upon hearing the knight, she awakes from her melancholy 
 trance and appeals to the nobles of Britain to realize their 
 responsibility as leaders of the people. At this point West 
 almost wholly abandons his archaic vocabulary in the ardor 
 of his appeal to the nobles to join in overcoming the abuses 
 of the giant Custom. He sees a time when wisdom and 
 virtue will again come to the land, once the yoke of "cell- 
 bred discipline" has been thrown off. Paedia will then re- 
 
EDUCATION 169 
 
 ascend her throne, surrounded by "vivid" laurels and ''frag- 
 rant" flowers; while ''von supercilious pedant train" must 
 be by her 
 
 Y-taiight a lesson in their schools unknown, 
 'To Learning's richest treasures to prefer 
 The knowledge of the world, and man's great business there.' 
 
 The utilitarian nature of West's thesis reflects the poet's 
 knowledge of Locke's Thoughts, which is concerned with 
 preparing a young nobleman for a responsible position in 
 the state. The prophecies of Paedia are clearly in the name 
 of utilitarian education. But West, however strong and di- 
 rect his stand against the humanities, does not mean to be 
 radical to the extent of complete substitution of a modern 
 course. Although the knight is revolutionary in that he 
 succeeds in carrying his son through the domain of Custom 
 into the valley of progressive realities, Paedia reveals not so 
 much radicalism as a conservative liberalism that would 
 retain whatever squares with virtue and vital knowledge in 
 the ancients. This is to be 
 
 Joined with whatever else of modern date 
 Maturer judgment, search more accurate, 
 Discovered have of Naiture, Man, and God. 
 
 Pope and West have much the same objective; both 
 poets are keenly aware of the need of reform that shall modi- 
 fy contemporary overemphasis on word study. Where West's 
 Paedia pleads for a course that shall combine modem sub- 
 jects with those of ancient days, Pope's Dullness, who is 
 disturbed by unmistakable signs of a desire for innovation, 
 sighs for a pedant king like James I, who will rule a court 
 with Latin ("stick the doctor's chair into the throne"), a 
 king who will "Give law to Words, and war with Words 
 alone" (Dmvciad, IV). 
 
170 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 John Lang^orne also turns from the study of words to 
 the observation of nature. His Inscription on the Door of a 
 Study tells the student who would enter there to come with 
 an open mind. He must forget his pedantic lore, 
 
 And all that superstition, fraught 
 
 With folly's lore, thy youth has taught — 
 
 * 
 
 Leave it. and learn to think again. 
 
 As he turns over volumes of the "mighty dead" he must re- 
 member that authors are human beings and that first ''from 
 Nature's works we drew our knowledge." Langhorne ad- 
 vises the man of inquiring spirit to enter "yonder grove" if 
 he wishes to find true knowledge. This advice is in harmony 
 with the questionings and injunctions of Defoe's Complete 
 English Gentleman. Defoe had asked, "But is it worth any 
 gentleman's while, as Oldham says, to go seven years to the 
 Grammar Bridewell (the school) and there beat Greek and 
 Latin?" Defoe's answer is, "The knowledge of things, not 
 words, makes a scholar." Langhorne writes in The En- 
 largement of the Mind (1763) of the 
 
 dull inmate of pedantic walls. 
 On whose old walk the sun-beam seldom falls, 
 Who knows of Nature, and of man no more 
 Than fills some page of antiquated lore — 
 
 Something of men these sapient drones may know, 
 Of men that lived two thousand years ago. 
 
 Such men despise the "better knowledge of the world" and 
 scorn the man who looks about him on nature. Langhorne 
 seems to have had a vision as early as 1763 of a course of 
 study that would embrace natural history, including the 
 study of man. In place of the "sages boasting o'er the 
 wrecks of time" he would make nature the preceptress of 
 
EDUCATION 1 71 
 
 children. In this respect he is in advance of Locke, who 
 had urged mainly that the child should not be loaded with 
 memory work but be made to think and reason for himself. 
 Langhorne leans toward doctrines like those of Rousseau, 
 who condemned language study for children except in the 
 mother tongue, and who wished to substitute knowledge 
 based on direct observation. Langhorne would have chil- 
 dren and men look about them ; he wishes them to open their 
 eyes and understand the visible world. Nature is to him 
 a "sacred guide." 
 
 See on each page her beauteous volume bear 
 The golden characters of good and fair. 
 All human knowledge (blush collegiate pride!) 
 Flows from her works, to none that reads denied. 
 
 Attacks on the humanities were strengthened by the 
 aid of those who, like Joseph Priestley, would substitute 
 scientific curiosity for traditional interest in the classics. 
 Priestley is convinced that at Warrington Academy the in- 
 struction is *'too scholastic, consisting of those studies which 
 were originally thought requisite to form the divine, and the 
 philosopher only, and had no direct view to civil and active 
 life ; and yet the greater part of our pupils were not intended 
 for any of the learned professions." He expresses the point 
 of view held by men of the century, like Bentham, Black- 
 stone, and Adam Smith, whose influence on educational 
 theory was wholly in the direction of useful knowledge. ^ 
 
 1 The scientific researches of Priestley and others were noticed 
 by poets. John Scott is overwhelmed by the immensity of the new 
 stores of nature which science has opened up. They are vast 
 "beyond what e'en a Priestley can explore." Mason's Ode to Mr. 
 Pinchbeck notices the "pint of Priestley's air." Lovell calls for 
 Priestley's wand. He would Hke to "tame the storm . . . with 
 calm expectant joy" like FrankHn, who could "in viewless channels 
 shape the lightning's course." Mason gives "sagest Verulam" 
 
172 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The lack of adequate text-books hampered the study of 
 science among children. A boy at school had practically to 
 remain a virtuoso for lack of teachers or books to guide 
 him in his observations of plant life. ^ This is illustrated in 
 the experience of Sir Joseph Banks, who was a companion 
 of Captain Cook on the voyage of the ''Endeavor" to Aus- 
 tralia. When, as a pupil at Eton, he was returning alone 
 from bathing, he observed the beauty of flowers by the 
 hedgerow in the lane. Although determined to study 
 botany, he could find no one to teach him except the old 
 wives of the neighborhood. During a holiday he came 
 upon Gerard's "Herball," and carried it back in triumph to 
 Eton. Such an experience makes it easy to see why 
 Pope was moved to ridicule the attempts of teachers to 
 sidetrack the interest of boys in natural history. 
 
 credit for banishing "childish vanity" from the groves of learning. 
 Bacon is looked upon as the prophet of unborn science. Wilkie 
 likewise notices him as the dispeller of "Gothic night" and as the 
 "dawning light" : 
 
 When ignorance possessed the schools 
 And reigned by Aristotle's rules, 
 
 A man was taught to shut his eyes, 
 
 And grow abstracted — to be wise. 
 Mickle reflects the new enthusiasm for naitural science in Knozvledge. 
 He joys to trace with Boyle how matter takes ten thousand forms 
 in metal, plants, and worms. And Soame Jenyns, after flying with 
 Newton "O'er all the rolling orbs on high," traces the mazes of 
 nature with "labouring Boyle," and with him admiringly observes 
 "matter's surprising subtilty." 
 
 ^ John Scott had often searched the pages of Linnaeus, 
 "The Scamian sage, whose wondrous toil, 
 Had classed the vegetable race." 
 On the poet's botanizing excursions, Linnaeus must have been his 
 chief reliance. 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 173 
 
 After the middle of the century, text-books showed a 
 tendency to meet the interest of children in the world about 
 them. In view of the dominating position Newton holds in 
 the estimation of poets, it is not surprising to find as early as 
 1754 A Plain and Familiar Introduction to the Nezvtonian 
 Philosophy.^ Newberry included in his "Circle of Sciences" 
 an attractive book on Newtonian philosophy (1761) ; Tom 
 Telescope, a young student, explains the laws of mechanics 
 with the aid of familiar objects. Many publications show 
 a tendency to simplify and popularize general science. Mrs. 
 Trimmer in 1780 wrote An Easy Introduction to the Knowl- 
 edge of Nature, in which she gives Isaac Watts credit for 
 stimulating her to write for children in such a way as to 
 interest them in birds, animals, fish, insects, and flowers. 
 John Aikin's Calendar of Nature (fourth edition, 1785) is 
 dedicated to Mrs. Barbauld and reflects the nature lessons 
 of Rousseau's Emile. William Mavor's Natural History 
 (1800) is the best volume on the subject for use in schools. 
 Priscilla Wakefield's Introduction to Botany (1796) illus- 
 trates the tendency to write books on separate' phases of the 
 general subject." In the last quarter of the century, Cowper 
 is abreast of his age. He conceives it to be one of the chief 
 delights of a parent to give his child vital knowledge based 
 on direct observation : 
 
 1 Newton is mentioned, and ahnost deified, in scores of pas- 
 sages from Thomson to Wordsworth. 
 
 2 For references, especially to books not available on this side 
 of the Atlantic, I am indebted to a very interesting study : L'educa- 
 tion en Angleterre entre 1750— 1800 Apergu sur I'influence peda- 
 gogique de J. J. Rousseau en Angleterre. These .... pour le Doctorat 
 de I'Universite Presentee a la Faculte des Lettres de Paris par 
 Jacques Pons. Paris, 1919- 
 
174 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 To show him in an insect, or a flower, 
 Such microscopic proof of skill and power, 
 As, hid from ages passed, God now displays. ^ 
 
 In order to make the subject matter of these studies com- 
 prehensible to young minds, it was essential to study the 
 mother tongue. Both Pope and West had deplored the 
 lack of attention to the vernacular. Their attacks were 
 specifically supported by Thomas Sheridan's prose treatise 
 on British Education; or The Source of the Disorders of 
 Great Britain (1756). The title page informs the reader 
 that the prevailing evils are the ^'natural and necessary con- 
 sequences of the present defective System of Education," by 
 which Sheridan means the classical curriculum. He re- 
 peats the same arguments already noted in the Dunciad and 
 West's Education. His constructive plan follows the cue 
 of West's observation that the muses who presided over the 
 springs of learning despised their native language. Sheri- 
 dan attempts to show that " a revival of the art of speaking, 
 and the study of our own language might contribute, in a 
 great measure, to the cure of these evils." He turns the 
 conventional arguments employed in favor of the classics, to 
 show the practical value of an intelligent and systematic 
 study of the mother tongue. He argues that everyone will 
 acknowledge the need of effective public speakers in Parli- 
 ament and on the forum, and that, as is clear from the essays 
 of Addison and others, clergymen are in need of proper 
 training in the mother tongue if they are to read the service 
 in such a way that the Establishment may retain a vital hold 
 on the masses. Pope's lines on the dismissal of students, 
 after a purely theoretical schooling, had incisively summar- 
 ized the evil : 
 
 Then, blessing all, "Go, Children' of my care! 
 
 To Practice now from Theory repair." (Dunciad, IV) 
 
 1 Tirocinium (636-38). 
 
EDUCATION 175 
 
 Byrom likewise realized the evils resulting from inat- 
 tention to correctness and power in the use of English. 
 This is evident from his strictures in Advice to the Rev. 
 
 Messrs. H and H » to Preach Slozv, which 
 
 emphasizes the need of training. 
 
 What is a sermon, good or bad, 
 If a man reads it like a lad ? 
 To hear some people, when they preach, 
 How they run o'er all parts of speech. 
 And neither raise a word, nor sink. 
 Our learned bishops, one would think, 
 Had taken schoolboys from the rod. 
 To make ambassadors of God. 
 
 Poets and prose writers are alike alive to the shortcom- 
 ings of the prevailing system, which does not prepare boys 
 for the duties of life. ^ 
 
 Sheridan sees a way out of the difficulty. He admits 
 that English has lacked stability ; but Doctor Johnson's Dic- 
 tionary may now serve as a standard. True stability, he 
 continues, can result only from thorough teaching of Eng- 
 lish in the schools. He is convinced that ''nothing can be 
 a greater national concern than the care of our language," 
 and concludes that the schools should labor to secure in 
 their scholars a facility, clearness, and elegance by daily 
 exercise in their own language. And as the art of speaking 
 can be acquired only with difficulty, it must be taught in 
 the schools by "study, precept, and example." These con- 
 tentions are in harmony with Pope's doctrine in the Dunciad. 
 It seemed odd to Pope that the young graduate could on 
 the grand tour forget his classical acquirements, in Italy of 
 
 1 Compare Swift's Letter to a Young Clergyman. 
 
176 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 all countries. If he found no practical use for them on 
 classic ground, they could be of little value to him at home. ^ 
 
 Walpole's comment on the great applause accorded the 
 Eton boy's English address of welcome to the King and 
 Queen in 1762, indicates the drift toward a recognition of 
 the mother tongue. "It was English, which is right. Why 
 should we talk Latin to our kings rather than Russ or Iro- 
 quois?" Prior had felt the need of apology for the English 
 Prologue (1695) spoken by the Westminster schoolboy, 
 Lord Buckhurst, at a performance of Dryden's Cleomenes. 
 The boy hesitated to welcome friends of the school ''in poor 
 English." On the other hand, half a century later, Byrom's 
 Verses for the Manchester Free Grammar School in 1748, 
 on the occasion of the breaking up of the school, shows that 
 six boys spoke in English and only one in Latin. 
 
 The attack on the classics was humorously carried for- 
 ward by Cawthorn in Wit and Learning, an Allegory ^ : 
 
 Each schoolboy sees, with half an eye, 
 The quarrels of the Pagan sky. 
 
 Before he was six years old, the boy played a thousand 
 waggish tricks ; he drilled a hole in Vulcan's kettles, broke a 
 prong from Neptune's trident, and stole the favorite sea- 
 knot of Amphitrite. The waggery of this child is presented 
 with a gusto that betrays the poet's sympathies. 
 
 Cawthorn's allegorical poem The Birth and Education of 
 Genius traces the progressive stages of a child's education. 
 After Genius had learned to read at the dame's school, his 
 father Phoebus experienced difficulty in finding a suitable 
 tutor : there were too many dullards "among the doctors of 
 Parnassus," 
 
 1 Dropped the dull lumber of the Latin store, 
 Spoiled his own language, and acquired no more. 
 
 2 Spoken at the Anniversary, 1757 (at Tunbridge School). 
 
EDUCATION 177 
 
 Who scarce had skill enough to teach 
 Old Lilly's elements of speech. 
 
 Finally, however, Phoebus came upon Criticism, who spoke 
 "pure Latin, and your Attic Greek" : he was in fact the ad- 
 miration of his college. He could detect the slightest liter- 
 ary flaw ; old authors were his bosom friends. Versed in 
 all the trifles of antiquity, he wrote learnedly, like Bentley, on 
 the origin of whistles. Apollo was glad of all his lore ; yet, 
 careful of his son, he more than suspected 
 
 That all this load of erudition 
 
 Might overlay his parts at once, 
 
 And turn him out a lettered dunce. 
 
 The question of classical studies is brought forward in 
 Robert Lloyd's Epistle to J. B. Esq. (1757). Lloyd, who 
 had been an usher at Westminster, desired a natural educa- 
 tion for youth. ;A ''truant from the pedant's school," he 
 would rid himself of antiquated rules. The artificiality and 
 stiff formality of classical teaching were uncongenial to 
 him. ^ He scorns pedants 
 
 Who waste their time, and fancies vex 
 With asper, lenis, circumflex, 
 And talk of mark and punctuation, 
 As 'twere a matter of salvation. 
 
 In Genius, Envy, and Time, a fable Addressed to JVilliain 
 Hogarth, Esq., he confesses himself to have been a worship- 
 per of truth from his earliest years, and as a result scorns 
 
 1 Had Shakespeare crept by modern rules, 
 We'd lost his witches, fairies, fools : 
 Instead of all that wild creation, 
 He'd formed a regular plantation, 
 A garden trim, and all enclosed, 
 In nicest symmetry disposed. 
 
178 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 the ''.gloss of knowing fools" who follow mechanical pre- 
 cepts. This attitude is revealed also in a scornful couplet 
 in A Dialogue : 
 
 Or give the Roman proper word 
 
 To things the Romans never heard. 
 
 The foregoing criticisms were focused on the curriculum 
 in schools that were feeders to the great universities. The 
 course of study was intended for boys who were ambitious, 
 like the son of Thomas Warton's Gloucestershire divine, to 
 wear a gown or to enter one of the professions. In the 
 Progress of Discontent (1746), Warton has the son brought 
 to the university, his chief reliance being ''Horace by heart, 
 and Homer in Greek." In the same way when Graeme was 
 stimulated by the thought of preferment through the chan- 
 nels of education, he traveled the only safe road, that of the 
 classics. His Student reveals the thoroughness and patience 
 with which he had applied himself to the established routine : 
 
 Fired with the prospect, I embraced the hint, 
 A grammar borrowed, and to work I went; 
 The scope and tenor of each rule I kept, 
 No accent missed me, and no gender 'scaped ; 
 I read whate'er commenting Dutchmen wrote, 
 Turned o'er Stobaeus, and could Suidas quote ; 
 In lettered Gellius traced the bearded sage. 
 Through all the windings of a wise adage. 
 
 In view of contemporary customs it was reasonable that 
 such conscientious efforts should have raised high hopes 
 that "some modern Laelius" would single him out for ad- 
 vancement. 
 
 As Winchester, Eton, and Westminster were closest to 
 the universities, their curriculum, method, and text-^books 
 were as a rule adopted by outlying grammar schools. This 
 resulted in a uniformity of preparation that facilitated the 
 
EDUCATION 179 
 
 matriculation of students at Oxford and Cambridge. To 
 accomplish this purpose, only the traditional subjects were 
 taught; the original intention of the founders was pretty 
 strictly adhered to. Grammar schools throughout England 
 had been founded like the school at Hargrave, near Chester, 
 "for the government, education, and instruction of youth in 
 Grammar and Virtue." ^ From the Cathedral School of 
 Gloucester it was reported that *'the classical education 
 pursued here is from the rudiments of Latin and Greek to 
 the extent of Sophocles, Euripides, etc., and the best of 
 Latin authors." Kingston in Hereford frankly reported 
 that the "general classical routine necessary for qualification 
 of youth for the Universities is carefully pursued." At 
 Ashford in Kent "the master is not required to teach them 
 writing or arithmetic or any other branch of literature, ex- 
 cept the Classics." The report from Wotton in Glouces- 
 tershire indicates how local conditions were modified ac- 
 cording to the preferences of the master : "The Westmin- 
 ster Latin and Greek Grammars are used, and its plan of 
 education is at present pursued, the Master having formerly 
 been a scholar upon that Royal Foundation." Smaller 
 schools that did not always carry the boy through the upper 
 school, easily adapted themselves to the individual student; 
 at least it would seem so from the report of High Wycombe 
 (Bucks.), where the Eton Latin and Greek grammars were 
 used "unless a boy is intended for Westminster or any 
 other Public School, where other grammars are preferred." 
 Sometimes, however, the Regulations definitely prescribed 
 the routine, as at Wilton (Chester), where we find : "5th The 
 Eton Grammar, and no other, shall be taught." Occasion- 
 
 iThis and the following quotations are taken from that in- 
 valuable compilation A Concise Description of the Endowed Gram- 
 mar Schools in England and Wales by Nicholas Carlisle, two vol- 
 umes, London, 1818. 
 
180 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 ally the master has written the Latin and Greek grammars. 
 This is the case at Reading (Bucks.), where the Rev. Dr. 
 Valpy was head master. In his school the system of educa- 
 tion was nevertheless founded upon those of Westminster, 
 Eton, and Winchester ''with such alterations as expedience 
 and locality render necessary." 
 
 A comparison of the authors a boy was required to read 
 reveals no fixed number or sequence. ^ The extensive drill 
 in Latin syntax and prosody required two lessons in the 
 morning and two in the afternoon, together with evening 
 exercises. English verses were supplied for translation in- 
 to Latin. It could not have been the rule in all schools to 
 supply the matter of these verses, for there is something 
 pathetic in the traditional request of the lower-form boys, 
 *Tlease give me some sense." At Appleby Parva, after 
 Greek had been taken up, the course was arranged so as to 
 give "Latin prose in the morning, and Latin poetry in the 
 afternoon." Clara Reeve reports (1799) that in a certain 
 school two evenings a week were given to reading English 
 classics so that the boys might know something of their na- 
 tive language while they were learning the dead ones. 
 But she adds, '* a trouble that few schoolmasters take upon 
 them." 2 
 
 After he had read Cicero and Homer, the boy wrote 
 Latin verses without having the matter supplied. No doubt 
 Cowper was thinking of prizes offered for excellence in 
 Latin verse when he wrote in Table Talk that at West- 
 minster 
 
 little poets strive 
 To set a distich upon six and five. 
 
 1 Compare in addition to Carlisle, op. cit., the Autobiography 
 of Samuel Johnson. 
 
 2 Destination: or Memoirs of a Private Family by Clara Reeve 
 (in three volumes, London, 1799), vol, I, p. 77. 
 
EDUCATION 181 
 
 As a boy he had been a poet at Westminster, and had been 
 made "proud with silver pence." In a letter to Unwin he 
 tells how in a day-dream he fancied himself again at school 
 to receive the reward of a silver groat that was sent from 
 class to class for the admiration of fellow students. At 
 Eton the master granted a weekly half holiday if some boy 
 had composed Latin verses worthy of being inscribed in gilt. 
 This boy was sent up to the master to ask for the holiday. 
 
 Saturday exercises included for the older boys the trans- 
 lation of the Catechism and the Thirty-nine Articles, "with 
 Welchman's notes," into Latin. After the long list of Latin 
 and Greek books and compilations the boy was expected to 
 master, it sounds like grim irony to be told that such a 
 course "generally proves as much as a Boy's stay at School 
 admits of." It is of such extended formal drill in parsing 
 and conjugation that Locke says, with an eye to the prac- 
 tical, "A great part of the learning now in fashion in the 
 schools of Europe, and that goes ordinarily into the round 
 of education, a gentleman may in good measure be un- 
 furnished with, without any disparagement to his affairs." 
 It is one of the complaints of Cowper in Tirocinium 
 that boys are kept at these schools too long, with the result 
 that the younger boys are corrupted by imitating the vices 
 of the boys of sixteen and eighteen. 
 
 Schools, unless discipline were doubly strong. 
 
 Detain their adolescent charge too long; 
 
 The management of tyros of eighteen 
 
 Is difficult, their punishment obscene (218 — 221). 
 
 As a matter of fact, children were admitted to these founda- 
 tions as soon as they could read the New Testament in 
 English, usually at the age of six. They might remain, 
 ordinarily, as in the instance of Congleton (Chester), "as 
 long as Parents please." Usually the statutes give "no 
 
182 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 specific time of superannuation," although at Hereford 
 scholars might not remain after sixteen, and at Tiverton 
 (Devon) not after eighteen, while at Eton, boys are not ac- 
 ceptable before eight or after eighteen. Even at Eton, 
 then, the course might drag out to ten years. It is small 
 wonder, in view of the lack of touch in the curriculum with 
 vital affairs of life, that West should think of boys as 
 wasting fruitless hours while ''hid in studious shades" ; and 
 the round from grammar to Latin verses and back again 
 naturally led him to say that "irksome and long the pas- 
 sage was." Richardson's opinion that ''a great deal of pre- 
 cious time is wasted to little purpose in the attaining of 
 Latin," simply shows that the novelist was at one with the 
 poet and philosopher in their attack on the classical curricu- 
 lum. 
 
 Churchill's trenchant lines in The Author convey the 
 bitterness of his recollections of childhood days spent in 
 the acquisition of dead languages. He was destined by 
 "cruel parents" for the church "ere it was known that I 
 should learn to read." He was made to bear the "slavish 
 drudgery of the schools." He misspent the precious hours 
 of his youth in climbing the steep and rugged ascent of 
 learning, only to find at the top that it were better to forget 
 the little he had learned at the barren spot called a school. 
 Jago's Labour and Genius (1768) contains vigorous satire 
 on the blindness of pedagogues. Jago's caustic lines con- 
 demn the leveling of all natural talent in the merciless rou- 
 tine of grammatical instruction. The boy of genuine parts 
 has no opportunity of showing his superiority to the dull 
 plodder who goes through prose and song "insensible of 
 all their graces," and is learned in words alone. Happy 
 recollections of his friendship with Shenstone at Solihul do 
 not enhance, even with the lapse of years, the "painful toil" 
 
EDUCATION 183 
 
 and the "dull, tiresome road" through 'Triscian's crabbed 
 rules." 
 
 For the gloomy conception of the teaching profession 
 outlined in The Author s Apology, Lloyd might have taken 
 as his theme the statement in the Vicar of Wakefield: "I 
 have been an usher at a boarding school myself, and, may 
 I die by an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be an un- 
 der-turnkey in Newgate." The poem gives the impres- 
 sions of a poet who had been an usher at Westminster. 
 With the bitterness of his friend Churchill he writes that 
 if he wished to avenge himself on his enemy, he could in- 
 flict no greater injury than to make him a "tool of learning" 
 in the form of an usher. Lloyd can not endure the thought 
 of "working on a barren soil" and laboring incessantly to 
 "cultivate a blockhead's brains." 
 
 Oh ! 'Tis a service irksome more 
 Than tugging at the slavish oar. 
 
 Yet such his task, a dismal truth, 
 Who watches o'er the bent of youth. 
 
 While earning a paltry stipend, the teacher sees his pupils 
 prosper by use of their talents ; but as for his own progress 
 in learning, 
 
 No joys, alas ! his toil beguile, 
 His own lies fallow all the while. 
 
 The evidence of poets and prose writers points clearly to 
 free use of liquor by masters and ushers. The Provost of 
 Eton in 1781 is described as one of the fat and gouty di- 
 vines whose fondness for port and cheerful company is 
 greater than his love of education. Cole, the antiquary, 
 used to have routs in his college apartments at Eton, the 
 college court being filled with carriages and tumults "not 
 much to the edification of a place of education." Jenyns 
 makes "vicar" rhyme with "liquor," and every reader of 
 
184 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 eighteenth-century fiction knows what the novelists thought 
 of drinking parsons. In Clarissa Harlozifc, Lord M. writes 
 to Lovelace that if he finds one of his tenants sober on the 
 occasion of Lovelace's marriage, 'Tritchard shall eject him." 
 A study of Gillray, Rowlandson, and Hogarth will con- 
 vince the most skeptical that Cowper was justified in his 
 statement that the ''government is too much interested in 
 the consumption of malt liquor." When Defoe spoke of 
 England as a "drunken nation from lord to tenant," he 
 probably thought also of schoolmasters. Goldsmith was 
 willing that schoolmasters should puzzle their brains over 
 grammar while he drank good stout liquor that gave his 
 genius "better discerning" ; but schoolmasters also indulged 
 in the privilege of stimulants. The potation penny con- 
 tributed by children at term end was probably put to the 
 use for which it was intended. Johnson's formula was 
 "claret for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes." 
 Colonel Jacques begged some beer to drink with his bread, 
 and reports that the "good woman gave me very freely." 
 Locke held in Thoughts that the child's ''Drink should be 
 only Small Beer." ^ 
 
 Although Cowper mercilessly flays the evils of public 
 school education, he is not primarily concerned with the 
 curriculum. Far from objecting to the classics, he is fa- 
 vorably disposed toward them. While not going to the 
 length of Shaftesbury, who fervently hoped that the time 
 would not be long ere he might change the unprofitable 
 study of "these moderns of ours" for a hearty application to 
 the ancients, or like Denham who swallowed his Greek 
 with the same eagerness as he did water when thirsty, 
 Cowper nevertheless recalls with pleasure how he cultivated 
 
 1 Locke's Some Thoughts Conceniing Education, Section i6, 
 Drink. 
 
EDUCATION 185 
 
 a school taste for ancient poetry, ''catching its ardor as I 
 mused along." Neither does he join hands with those who 
 plead for a study of the mother tongue. Although an- 
 nouncing himself as ''no friend of Lily's Grammar," he con- 
 siders it one of his principal advantages as a composer of 
 verses that he has not read an English poet "these thirteen 
 years, and but one these twenty years." His classroom 
 experiences must have been pleasant, for he reveals a fond- 
 ness for school terminology, weaving into his lines in Con- 
 versation such phrases as "prompts him" and "prescribes his 
 theme." His genuine scorn is aroused by the "chattering 
 train" of Fashion, who is aped in the schools. Cowper warms 
 up to his theme while considering the spendthrift boy whose 
 school expense "pinches parents blue" and "mortifies the 
 liberal hand of love." He is keen on the trail of moral 
 offenses, which he finds "where most offensive, in the skirts 
 Of the robed pedagogue." ^ 
 
 Cowper's Tirocinium (1785) condemns schools chiefly 
 on the ground that the separation of the boy from parental 
 ties destroys not only his confidence in his father but also 
 his ability to join naturally thereafter in the life of the 
 home circle. This painful rupture is the beginning of all 
 evils, and occurs at an early age when the boy is left to 
 the mercies of a crowded school that can not properly 
 guard his morals or guide him in the right path. While 
 the parent is absorbed in the careful breeding of colts and 
 puppies, his son is scampering at one of "these menageries" 
 which "all fail their trust." Thinking of his own experience 
 at school, Cowper concludes that "great schools suit best 
 the sturdy and the rough." One large class of boys who are 
 torn from home and who are "at best but pretty buds un- 
 blown" miss the affection of father and mother, and are 
 
 1 The Task, Book II. 
 
186 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 given *'by public hackneys in the schooling trade" no better 
 nourishment for the growing mind than ''conjugated verbs, 
 and nouns declined." Sound religion such as the child had 
 learned at home at his mother's knees is sparingly taught 
 while he is crammed with "much mythologic stuff." At 
 this point the poet escapes to a footnote to guard against 
 misunderstanding. He does "not mean to censure the 
 pains that are taken to instruct a schoolboy in the religion 
 of the heathen, but merely that neglect of Christian culture 
 which leaves him shamefully ignorant of his own." This 
 is in harmony with Cowper's specific theme. 
 
 That we are bound to cast the minds of youth 
 Betimes into the mould of heavenly truth. 
 That taught of God they may indeed be wise, 
 Nor ignorantly wandering miss the skies (105 — 108). 
 
 Guided by this thought, Cowper views with pleasure the 
 home training of the infant and child. He is carried back to 
 the "season of life's happy spring" by the thought of that 
 ingenious dreamer in whose "well-told" story "sweet fiction 
 and sweet truth prevail." Bunyan's name is not mentioned, 
 however, "lest so despised a name should move a sneer." 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress would naturally be a favorite 
 with Cowper because it "guides the Progress of the soul 
 to God." Until sent to the public school, the child was not 
 ashamed to read such books or to begin and close the day 
 with prayer. If the parent wishes to train his boy to lose 
 these habits, which are a "bond upon his heart," he should 
 allow him to learn "loose expense and fashionable waste" 
 with a mob of boys at a public school where he will remain 
 childish in "mischief only and in noise" because taverns and 
 the bad example of older boys will there teach the knowledge 
 which school pedantry does not. The glory of former ages 
 when schools bred poets, statesmen, and divines has fled : 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 187 
 
 Our striplings shine indeed, but with such rays 
 As set the midnight riot in a blaze. 
 
 The evil is heightened by the careless father who regales his 
 sons with stories of his schoolboy adventures, in place of 
 emphasizing the pleasing spectacle of those experiences 
 which would make him live over again his "innocent sweet 
 simple years" through recollection of 'The little ones, un- 
 buttoned, glowing hot" in their games at school, where he 
 "started into life's long race." 
 
 Children whose expectation of riches or titles makes solid 
 worth an encumbrance may indeed learn at school a certain 
 pleasing address or personal carriage, and the scorn of all 
 delights but those of sense. ,But the plebeian, whose chief 
 distinction should be a spotless name, must shine because of 
 "true desert or not at all." What are parents thinking of, 
 then, if they "risk their hopes, their dearest treasure, there?" 
 It is immoral to risk all in order that the child may make 
 a titled friend by intercourse with young peers at a great 
 public school. It is "barbarous prostitution of your son" 
 to proceed on the assumption that "The parson knows 
 enough who knows a Duke." The poet scorns such boyish 
 friendship, which can make "A piece of mere church-furni- 
 ture at best." The "public hives of puerile resort" that are 
 of most approved standing, owe their repute in part at least 
 to such sordid considerations. The hope of connections 
 formed for interest swells the great schools beyond a size 
 that can be well managed. And yet Cowper does not wish 
 to indicate that small schools are therefore to be preferred. 
 He will praise a school as Pope has praised a government: 
 that one is best which is most faithfully administered. 
 
 Few boys are born with talents that excel, 
 
 But all are capable of living well ; 
 
 Then ask not, whether limited or large? 
 
 But, watch they strictly, or neglect their charge? 
 
188 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 If masters are anxious only that the boy may con his lessons 
 while they neglect his morals as a ''despised concern," the 
 great schools and small deserve a common blame. 
 
 To the father who is blessed with an ingenuous son, 
 Cowper offers as substitute for a master, that the parent be 
 
 Father, and friend, and tutor, all in one. 
 
 Why resign into a stranger's hand the task which he is him- 
 self capable of performing? 
 
 How ! — turn again to tales long since forgot, 
 
 Aesop, and Phaedrus, and the rest? — Why not? 
 
 He will not blush, that has a father's heart, 
 
 To take in childish plays a childish part. 
 
 But bends his sturdy back to any toy 
 
 That youth takes pleasure in, to please his boy. (545 — 550) 
 
 What can compensate the father for such pleasures to be 
 enjoyed in ''domestic snug recess?" Certainly not a son 
 whose heart has been alienated by absence and by accomp- 
 lishments or vices learned at school. 
 
 If the father's professional demands absorb all his time 
 and energy, he may find it expedient to engage a reliable 
 tutor, who can be his son's best friend in domestic sur- 
 roundings. A capable tutor, provided his talents are re- 
 spected in the household, will increase a parent's delight in 
 his son because discipline will be backed by the love which 
 the son would miss at school. His mind will be developed, 
 but at the same time the parent may joy to see "his morals 
 undefiled." 
 
 Cowper is so sensitive to sensual abuses that he offers 
 still another alternative. If the parent is a worldly man 
 whose table is "indeed unclean" with "discourse obscene," 
 and if he has a "polite, card-playing" wife who is chained 
 to routs, so that every day the child sees in the home what is 
 fatal to his future, 
 
EDUCATION 189 
 
 Find him a better in a distant spot, 
 
 Within some pious pastor's humble cot, 
 
 Where vile example (yours I chiefly mean, 
 
 The most seducing, and the oftenest seen) 
 
 May never more be stamped upon his breast, 
 
 Nor yet perhaps incurably impressed. (759 — 764) 
 
 There he will grow strong in body and soul under a kindly 
 and natural regimen of regular hours and simple diet. In- 
 stead of idle dreaming of past and future follies, 
 
 His virtuous toil may terminate at last 
 In settled habit and decided taste. 
 
 By presenting these ways out of the dilemma, Cowper 
 decides the debate over the comparative value of school and 
 home education. 
 
 Cowper's lines are addressed to the prosperous middle 
 class of EngHshmen (''tenants of life's middle state") 
 whose undebauched character retains two thirds of all 
 English virtue. He calls upon them to look about on an 
 age ''perversely blind" in the matter of education, and to 
 decide wisely in the education of their sons. The school- 
 bred boy may be virtuous still, but if so he is the excep- 
 tion, because in the eyes of the poet, prevailing manners of 
 loose taste and extravagance take their color from the 
 schools. Therefore, 
 
 though I would not advertise them yet, 
 Nor write on each — "This building to be let," 
 Unless the world were all prepared to embrace 
 A plan well worthy to supply their place ; 
 Yet, backward as they are, and long have been, 
 To cultivate and keep the MORALS clean 
 (Forgive the crime), I wish them, I confess, 
 Or better managed, or encouraged less. (915 — 922) 
 
 Poetic attacks like those of Pope, West, and Cowper 
 put schoolmasters on the defensive. This is clear from a 
 
190 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 prose treatise like Barrow's Essay on Education (1802), 
 which contains a chapter on the comparative advantages of 
 school and home education. Although novelists and essay- 
 ists of the century confirm the evidence of poets on the edu- 
 cation of children, masters of schools tried to meet ob- 
 jections raised on the grounds of improper supervision and 
 poor instruction due to large numbers. Barrow suggests 
 that the evils of domestic education can be tolerated only in 
 favor of those who are incapacitated physically or mentally. 
 It is obvious, however, that he is holding a brief in relation 
 to which he is not a disinterested party. The evidence of 
 poets against endowed schools is supported down through 
 the century. 
 
 Poems based on material drawn from village schools 
 were written in a different literary tradition. The tendency 
 toward sentimental and idyllic treatment is strong in all 
 poets who noticed the elementary or village schools. Such 
 humorous treatments of the earliest stages of education as 
 those of Prior and Tickell, which are less common than the 
 idyllic treatment as exemplified by Shenstone's Schoolmis- 
 tress (1742) and Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1770), 
 are prompted by good nature, and not by the biting satire 
 that inspired the lines of Churchill and Lloyd on the en- 
 dowed schools. Distance lent enchantment to the poet's 
 representation of the first stages of his education. Even 
 where the problem of poverty in relation to schooling has 
 been noticed, as in Dyer's The Fleece, we may note the 
 same tendency to overlook harsher facts. That the problem 
 of providing common education for the masses was acute 
 is instanced by the fact that Brougham's Committee in 18 18 
 reported three thousand five hundred parishes, in a total 
 
EDUCATION 191 
 
 of ten thousand, without schools of any kind. Practical ef- 
 forts to establish primary education had been made from 
 the last decade of the seventeenth century by the Society 
 for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. In the eighties 
 of the eighteenth century the Sunday School movement, 
 headed by Raikes, had faced the problem ; and the efforts of 
 Hannah More to establish schools at Cheddar, have already 
 been noticed. The fact, however, is that the elementary 
 school did not receive either the amount or the kind of prac- 
 tical treatment accorded to the endowed schools. 
 
 Although poets were on the whole fully abreast of the 
 most advanced contemporary educational ideals with 
 regard to endowed schools and the houses of industry, they 
 were inclined to become conventional or sentimental the 
 moment they took up the first period of a child's education. 
 Mention of the hornbook, for instance, is common from 
 Prior to Wordsworth. Although the hornbook must have 
 been displaced in part at least by the spelling-book before 
 the reign of George II, references and allusions persist to 
 the end of the century. ^ Cowper was five years old at the 
 close of the reign, yet he notes as late as 1785 that parents 
 put a hornbook into the child's hand. They do this to 
 please the child at a tender age: 
 
 Tis called a book, though but a single page. - 
 Added to the unique form and shape is the quaint poetic 
 flavor of the criss-crow row that is associated with the horn- 
 book." 
 
 1 In Cowpers Conversation, alphabets of ivory hold the atten- 
 tion of the unlettered boy, who is 
 
 Sorting and puzzling with a deal of glee, 
 Those seeds of science called his ABC. 
 
 2 Tirocinium. 
 
 '•'' Compare the poem The Characters of the Christ-Cross Rozv, 
 attributed to Thomas Gray, Aldine edition. 
 
192 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Coming down to the eighteenth century from medieval 
 days, the hornbook has rightfully been called the well- 
 spring of English education and literature : 
 
 All human arts and every science meet 
 Within the limits of thy single sheet. 
 
 Few specimens have survived the destruction which has be- 
 fallen children's books A penny hornbook at a sale in 
 London in 1893 brought the sum of sixty-five pounds. 
 
 In Prior's Alma, the English maid gives Master John 
 a gingerbread hornbook. 
 
 And, that the child may learii the better, 
 
 As he can name, he eats the letter. 
 
 Proceeding thus with vas-t delight, 
 
 He spells, and gnaws, from left to right. (Canto //) 
 
 Tickell gives a humorous account in his Horn-Book : 
 
 Thee will I sing, in comely wainscot bound, 
 And golden verge enclosing thee around ; 
 The faithful horn befor:?. from age to age, 
 Preserving thy invaluable page ; 
 Behind, thy patron saint in armour shines, 
 With sword and lance, to guard thy sacred lines : 
 Beneath his courser's feet the dragon lies 
 Transfixed; his blood thy scarlet cover dyes; 
 Th' instructive handle's at the bottom fixed. 
 Lest wrangling critics should pervert the text. 
 * 
 
 No greasy thumbs thy spotless leaf can soil, 
 Nor crooked dogs-ears thy smooth corners spoil. 
 
 Scarce lives the man to whom thou'rt quite unknown, 
 Though few th' extent of thy vast empire own. ^ 
 
 1 Cawthorn's JVit and Learning (1757) : 
 
 Here, puppy ! with this penny get 
 A hornbook or an alphabet ; 
 And see if that licentious eye 
 Can tell a great A from an I ? 
 
EDUCATION 193 
 
 Poets often refer satirically to the ignorance or illiteracy 
 of the masses, without, however, inquiring into probable 
 causes or remedies. By using the hornbook as his point 
 of departure, Tickell is exceptional in bringing his discussion 
 of illiteracy close to the affairs of children. In mock heroic 
 vein he gives a picture of the fond grandsire who was con- 
 soled and comforted on his deathbed by hearing his grand- 
 son Hodge pronounce gravely the great A, B, C of the 
 hornbook. The poet also notices the general state of in- 
 ability to read. Fame reports that there are whole parishes, 
 especially in Essex Hundreds, in which the hornbook is 
 unknown. It has since been estimated that, in a total of 
 five and one half million inhabitants in 1700, only thirty 
 thousand children were receiving schooling, whereas ac- 
 cording to our standards there should have been nine hun- 
 dred thousand. ^ 
 
 Although poets are content to refer to the hornbook, 
 we know that awakened interest ' 1 the study of the mother 
 tongue resulted in the publication of spelling-books and 
 grammars. In Mandeville's Essay on Chanty Schools we 
 find in addition to references to the criss-cross row (Christ- 
 Cross Row), allusions to heaps of spelling-books and 
 primers; and publishers' announcements contain such titles 
 as The Child's First Book. In Defoe's Complete English 
 Gentleman we find speculations on the advantage of spelling 
 the ''beautifullest and best improved language in the world." 
 As early as 1699 the board of the Society for the Promotion 
 of Christian Knowledge gave a hearing to Mr. Symons, a 
 schoolmaster of Cripplegate, who had announced the dis- 
 covery of the secret of teaching twenty to thirty boys the 
 alphabet in a day's time. 
 
 ^ Consult D. Salmon's The Education of the Poor in the Eigh- 
 teenth Century. 
 
194 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 In actual business practice we find that during the first 
 quarter of the century masters were frequently bound to 
 teach apprentices to write. Stipulations to this effect are 
 frequent in Sheffield about 1715. The Manuscript Inden- 
 tures at Corsham contain a memorandum concerning Peter 
 Bush, who was bound on May 20, 1706: ''it was agreed 
 before sealing hereof by all parties therein concerned that 
 the said William Goodwyn shall teach his said apprentice to 
 write 'Well before he is forth of his time." ^ 
 
 In spite of the wide interest in grammar, children could 
 not have benefited much, because poor spelling was common 
 among all classes in town and country. Although Wilkie 
 takes offense at his ''degenerate age of lead" for its belief 
 that Shakespeare could not read, his biographer says that 
 "deeply learned as he was, Wilkie could neither read nor 
 spell correctly." Chatterton in Kew Gardens observes that 
 it is doubtful if Bristol aldermen can read ; while Lloyd 
 states that not one in twenty will succeed, for "Consider, 
 sir, how few can read." It is to be expected that Cowper's 
 "rural carvers" would try to immortalize themselves in 
 "characters uncouth and spelt amiss" ; but we are hardly 
 prepared for the evidence of illiteracy among men and 
 women of station in life. In Clarissa Harlowe there is 
 this appeal : "Dear, dear sir ! if I am to be compelled ! let it 
 be in favor of a man that can read and write." And later, 
 in connection with a wretchedly spelled letter from Solmes, 
 Clarissa says : "he can read and write as well as most gentle- 
 men, I can tell you that" ; while in Pamela there is comment 
 on the nobility to the effect that Lord Davers's nephew 
 "spells most lamentably." The same situation appears with 
 even greater emphasis with regard to women. In Clarrisa 
 Harloive there is the comment: "So, the honest girl is ac- 
 
 1 See O. J. Dunlop's English Apprenticeship and Child Labor. 
 
EDUCATION 195 
 
 cepted — of good parentage — but, through a neglected educa- 
 tion, plaguy ilHterate : she can neither write, nor read wtit- 
 ing." Defoe's observations on female education are that 
 girls are taught to read, "and perhaps to write their names 
 or so, and that is the height of a woman's education." Gay 
 passes off a bad speller with the comment "like a court lady 
 though he write and spell." 
 
 The education of girls was of course in general not as 
 careful as that of Swift's Stella. In the elementary schools, 
 girls were taught chiefly to sew and knit, so as to fit them for 
 service, this being the attitude even in the time of Hannah 
 More's Cheddar Schools at the close of the century. It is 
 therefore not merely witty of Chesterfield to admonish his 
 son that "Inaccuracies in orthography, or in style, are never 
 pardoned but in ladies." Walpole recalls how the younger 
 Duchess of Marlborough "exposed herself by placing a 
 monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and 
 bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey." It 
 would seem from all evidence that the primitive and cer- 
 tainly inadequate hornbook could not have been an effective 
 medium for teaching more than the alphabet, and that the 
 shoals of mothers' assistants did not perform their mission 
 adequately. 
 
 The same impulse that stirred poets to recall lovingly 
 their early acquaintance with the hornbook, led them also 
 to remember with affection the village schoolmistress. 
 Rural surroundings and her own simple ways fitted in easily 
 with an idyllic conception of early childhood as a happy, 
 carefree time. Sympathetic pictures of the dame's school 
 occur as late as Henry Kirke White's Childhood, which 
 notices how the "village matron kept her little school" ; and 
 Crabbe is stirred to write lines that breathe sympathy and 
 love in The Parish Register (1807) : 
 
196 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The pious mistress of the school sustains 
 
 Her parents' part, nor their affection feigns, 
 
 But pitying feels; with due respect and joy, 
 
 I trace the matron at her loved employ. (Part /) 
 
 The poet of realism might here have written with char- 
 acteristic bareness of detail, for later governmental in- 
 vestigation and debates in Parliament are not colored by 
 sentiment. We hear of gray-haired dames whose chief 
 recommendation is their poverty. A member quoted a 
 dame as saying: ''It's little they pays, and it's little we 
 teaches them." Macaulay, while speaking in the Commons 
 in 1847, refers to teachers of both sexes in elementary 
 schools as the ''refuse of the callings," and contends that they 
 do "not know whether the earth is a cube or a sphere." Yet 
 whatever their shortcomings, village schools were the sub- 
 ject of sentimental treatment from Shenstone to Crabbe. 
 
 The schoolmistress fared better than the schoolmaster. 
 Burns, who was quick to sense sham and pretension in the 
 dignitaries of his acquaintance, has left a not too pleasing 
 record of schoolmasters. As a result of Burns's satire in 
 Death and Dr. Hornbook (1785), John Wilson, parish 
 schoolmaster at Tarbolton, was compelled to relinquish his 
 teaching. The bad conditions from whi(^h elementary edu- 
 cation suffered, become clear from a perusal of this "true 
 story." Wilson at the same time conducted the parish 
 school and a small grocery shop, where in addition to com- 
 modities he sold drugs and gave medical advice. In the 
 words of Burns : "This gentleman, Dr. Hornbook, is pro- 
 fessionally a brother of the sovereign order of the ferula ; 
 but, by intuition and inspiration, is at once an apothecary, 
 surgeon, and physician." 
 
 Much of the characteristic wit of Burns went into the 
 composition of the not wholly complimentary Epitaph for 
 
EDUCATION 197 
 
 Mr. William Michie, schoolmaster of Cleish Parish, Fife- 
 shire '. 
 
 Here lie Willie Michie's bones ; 
 
 O Satan, when ye tak him, 
 Gie him the schulin o' your weans, 
 For clever deils he'll mak them! 
 
 Byrom's Epitaph (zmitten in chalk on the grave-stone of a 
 profligate schoolmaster) also credits its subject with more 
 skill than ability. 
 
 Here lies John Hill, 
 A man of skill, 
 
 His age was five times ten : 
 He ne'er did good. 
 Nor ever wou'd. 
 
 Had he lived as long again. 
 
 It is not necessary for the purpose of this study to ex- 
 amine details that constitute the differences between the 
 earlier and later versions of Shenstone's Schoolmistress. 
 In the mood of Tickell, when that poet deigned to notice the 
 humble hornbook, and in the spirit of Gay's Trivia, Shen- 
 stone in 1737 published The Schoolmistress in a volume of 
 Poems for friends. Although The Schoolmistress was in- 
 tended to produce a humorous effect, the reading public took 
 it seriously, as in the instance of Gay's Shepherd's Week, 
 and enjoyed its imagery. As it is generally known, Shen- 
 stone's poem was published in the revised form of 1742. 
 Although the dame is the central figure, Shenstone is writ- 
 ing from the point of view of the children. 
 
 The sentiment with which he strove to suffuse his lines 
 does not lead him to ignore wholly the shortcomings of the 
 village school. In a pensive mood he observed the unworld- 
 liness and simplicity of schoolmistress and scholars ; but 
 his train of sentiments is based on direct observation. He 
 "fairly drew his picture from the spot." In the spirit of his 
 age he feared that this attention to lowly life would be ''im- 
 
198 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 pitted to an entire ignorance." But it was this "fondness 
 for his native country" and the fact that he did not ''counter- 
 feit the scene" which drew the praise of Wordsworth, who 
 would back the schoolmistress in her garden or in her chair 
 before the cottage door. Shenstone, in fact, has sketched 
 sufficient details to make possible a reconstruction of many 
 of the features of a rural elementary school. If the ad- 
 vertisement calls attention to the sentimental strain of the 
 poem, ("a peculiar tenderness of sentiment") the quotation 
 from Virgil emphasizes its realistic details : 
 
 And mingled sounds and infant plaints we hear, 
 That pierce the entrance shrill, and wound the tender ear. 
 
 The opening stanzas reflect Shenstone's endeavor to 
 combine idyllic elements with details of direct observation. 
 Shenstone's heart is forlorn "full sorely" to think how mo- 
 dest worth lies neglected in the dull shades of obscurity. 
 Then follows the setting, which is not wholly idyllic : 
 
 In every village marked with little spire, 
 Embowered in trees, and hardly known to Fame, 
 There dwells in lowly shed, and mean attire, 
 A matron old, whom we Schoolmistress name ; 
 Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame; 
 They grieven sore, in piteous durance pent, 
 Awed by the power of this relentless dame; 
 And oft-times, on vagaries idly bent, 
 For unkempt hair, or task unconned, are sorely shent. 
 
 The birch tree under whose wide-waving branches the 
 school is sheltered, boded ill to pupils, whose "pulse beat 
 low" when the wind rustled in its leaves. Another stanza 
 elaborates a guarded protest against flogging, under the 
 image of a scarecrow that frightens innocent birds. The sen- 
 timent which redounded to the protection of animals, and a 
 feeling for their hardships, led Shenstone to notice also the 
 hardships of childhood. 
 
EDUCATION 199 
 
 The dame's scrupulous cleanliness is reflected in her 
 simple attire. Her cap was whiter than the driven snow, and 
 her apron showed as delicate a blue as the harebell. She 
 wore a russet kirtle of her own weaving. Her pupils were 
 ranged about her in ''gaping wonderment" and "pious awe." 
 She could not be accused of a love for pompous titles, but 
 ''held right dear" the names bestowed upon her: ''Goody, 
 good-woman, gossip, n'aunt, or dame." Like many a par- 
 son and schoolmaster of the eighteenth century, she was 
 something of an apothecary or herbalist, for she disdained 
 mere painted flowers, and cultivated in her garden only 
 "herbs for use and physic" ; the "pungent radish, biting in- 
 fant's tongue" found its place with "marjoram sweet" and 
 lavender for "kerchief clean." On a Sunday evening she 
 sat before her door, singing Sternhold's hymns, or in her 
 summer seat in the garden retailed Bible stories. She 
 admonished children when they were present, and held her 
 sway over them when they were out of her sight, for she was 
 warned of all their doings : 
 
 if little bird their pranks behold, 
 'Twill whisper in her ear, and all the scene unfold. 
 
 These idyllic passages are interwoven with lines of a 
 more sombre and forbidding cast. Like White's dame at 
 the end of the century, Shenstone's schoolmistress is more 
 fonnidable in the schoolroom than without; and the poet 
 does not hesitate to portray her in the panoply of her office. 
 Her elbow-chair is like the chair "of Scottish stem" in 
 which the sovereign is crowned. 
 
 And in her hand, for sceptre, she does wield 
 Tway birchen sprays; with anxious fear entwined, 
 With dark distrust, and sad repentance filled; 
 And stedfast hate, and sharp affliction joined. 
 And fury uncontrouled, and chastisement unkind. 
 
200 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Without her vested power to mete out punishment to "re- 
 belHous breasts" by applying the "baleful sprig," there 
 would be no ''comely peace of mind, and decent order" in 
 English cottages. Clothed with such power 
 
 sits the dame, disguised in look profound, 
 And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around. 
 
 After a stately command from her, the urchins take their 
 books in hand. One luckless wight is found contemplating 
 the picture of St. George and the Dragon instead of the 
 criss-cross row. The dame looses his brogues, and "levels 
 well her aim." Discipline evidently depended not on love 
 and leading, but on fear, for the dame must flog "Till fear 
 has taught them a performance meet." Shenstone's analysis 
 of the child mind in this flogging scene shows that he was 
 writing with his eye on the object. There is an especially 
 convincing bit of psychological analysis in the stanzas that 
 trace the fluctuations of emotion in the sister of the boy who 
 is being flogged. .Outside of Blake's poetry, this is the 
 most extended passage that attempts the portrayal of chil- 
 dish emotion. The continued obstinacy of the boy after he 
 has been sent to the corner, where he stands with one fist 
 in his mouth and the other in his hair, and his stolid refusal 
 to be moved by the dame's cajolery and her offering of 
 cakes, are well done. But the passage is no more vivid than 
 the analysis of the little sister's reaction to her brother's 
 peril and disgrace. 
 
 All playful as she sate, she grows demure ; 
 She finds full soon her wonted spirits flee; 
 She meditates a prayer to set him free : 
 Nor gentle pardon could this dame deny 
 (If gentle pardon could with dames agree) 
 To her sad grief that swells in either eye, 
 And wrings her so that all for pity she could dye. 
 
EDUCATION 201 
 
 No longer can she now her shrieks command; 
 And hardly she forbears, through awful fear, 
 To rushen forth, and with presumptuous hand. 
 To stay harsh Justice in its mid career. 
 (Ah ! too remote to ward the shameful blow !) 
 She sees no kind domestic visage near, 
 And soon a flood of tears begins to flow ; 
 And gives a loose at last to unavailing woe. 
 
 When Shenstone moralizes this bit of photographic 
 realism, there is a suggestion of romantic protest against 
 repression and the dead leveling of pupils which was so 
 obnoxious to his schoolmate Jago at Solihul. We are told 
 that the dame knew how to thwart the proud and raise the 
 stibmissive child : but the poet sounds a warning, neverthe- 
 less, against the indiscriminate policy of repression common 
 in all schools. The regimen of fear is easily abused by 
 authority in power over the little ones. Therefore 
 
 Beware, ye dames, with nice discernment see. 
 Ye quench not too the sparks of nobler fires : 
 Ah ! better far than all the Muses' lyres, 
 All coward arts, is Valour's generous heart; 
 The firm fixt breast which fit and right requires, 
 Like Vernon's patriot soul! more justly great 
 Than Craft that pimps for ill, or flowery false Deceit. 
 
 He sees a little bench of bishops, a chancellor in embryo, 
 or a poet who, 
 
 Though now he crawl along the ground so low, 
 
 Nor weeting how the Muse should soar so high, 
 
 Wisheth. poor starveling elf! his paper kite may fly. 
 
 Children should be "nursed with skill" while at school ; for 
 ''dazzling fruits appear" only when dames teach "with sa- 
 gacious foresight." 
 
 The poem closes in a pensive strain, after an idyllic pas- 
 sage on the fruits and Shrewsbury cates that tempt chil- 
 dren freed from school to part with their pennies. 
 
202 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Ah ! midst the rest, may flowers adorn his grave, 
 Whose art did first these dulcet cates display! 
 A motive fair to Learning's imps he gave, 
 Who cheerless o'er the darkling region stray; 
 Till Reason's morn arise, and light them on their way. 
 
 Shenstone is preoccupied with children whose ages range 
 from three to six years. His schoolmistress must have 
 combined with her school duties some of the functions of 
 a day-nurse. Across the open doorway of the school is an 
 "imprisoning-board" 
 
 Lest weakly wights of smaller size should stray; 
 Eager, perdie, to bask in sunny day ! 
 
 The dame's "ancient hen," 
 
 Which, ever and anon, impelled by need. 
 Into her school, begirt with chickens, came, 
 
 further emphasizes the lack of organization and school at- 
 mosphere according to our standards of elementary school 
 procedure. In fact, in spite of the poet's conscious effort to 
 suffuse the whole with tenderness and sentiment, much of 
 which was no doubt true to his recollections of Sarah Lloyd 
 and her school at Halesowen, he adhered closely to the 
 spirit of the motto. Whatever the idyllic charm of the 
 setting and the picturesque dame in her garden or at her 
 cottage door, she is not, in the light of modern ideals, at- 
 tractive in her schoolroom. It is not a schoolroom full of 
 happy, interested, responsive youngsters whose activities are 
 lovingly, if scientifically, evoked by a sympathetic teacher 
 who has been trained to an understanding of the child mind. 
 The fleeting glimpses which Godsmith vouchsafes of the 
 village school at Sweet Atiburn (in The Deserted Vil- 
 lage, 1770) are seen through a haze of sentiment that does 
 not wholly obscure harsh facts. The school was as bare 
 and ill regulated as that of Shenstone's schoolmistress. 
 
EDUCATION 203 
 
 Though the master was "skilled to rule," the poet does not 
 obscure the fact that the little school was a ''noisy man- 
 sion." The rule of fear by flogging lay at the heart of his 
 pedagogy. (Goldsmith's interest is chiefly in the school- 
 master, who is seen through the eyes of his pupils, and then 
 as reflected in the admiration of the gazing rustics. They 
 wonder how one small head could carry all he knew. But 
 with the clownish admiration is bound up the unwhole- 
 some fear of his pupils, for he was "a man severe" and 
 "stern to view." The "boding tremblers" had learned to 
 foretell the day's disasters in his "morning face," and were 
 not above laughing at his many jokes with "counterfeited 
 glee." They were sensitive to the "dismal tidings" im- 
 plied in his frowns. ^' Goldsmith, who reveals no interest 
 in the problems of the village school, but rather emphasizes 
 the picturesque figure of the schoolmaster who heightens the 
 efifect of the idyllic background of happy village simplicity, 
 nevertheless bears witness to the fact that the schoolmaster 
 was, if anything, harsher and more intolerant than the 
 schoolmistress. 
 
 About the age of fourteen. White composed his poem 
 Childhood, which is colored by the melancholy that was 
 characteristic of his temperament and led to his belief that 
 childhood also drinks of "the bitter cup of care." The 
 school in which he first entered the "low vestibule" of "learn- 
 ing's fane" was a cottage over whose mouldering walls the 
 mantling woodbine crept. There the "village matron kept 
 her little school." She is like Shenstone's schoolmistress in 
 her neat habits and industry, and is individualized by her 
 use of spectacles. 
 
 1 Compare Charles Lamb's Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty 
 Years Ago. 
 
204 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Faint with old age, and dim were grown her eyes, 
 A pair of spectacles their want supplies ; 
 These does she guard secure, in leathern case. 
 From thoughtless wights, in some unweeted place. 
 
 She was gentle of heart, but like Goldsmith's schoolmaster 
 knew how to rule. When the poet was ''harshly" reproved 
 before he had become inured to alphabetic toils, he crept 
 back to his corner broken-hearted, and wept while thoughts 
 of "tender home" passed through his mind. But out of 
 school hours, he and his schoolmates gathered about the 
 dame's wheel at the door of her cottage to wonder ''how 
 'twas her spinning manufactured cloth." Children did not 
 fear her at such times, "for out of school she never knew 
 to chide." 
 
 Crabbe admired Shenstone's Schoolmistress, and in The 
 Parish Register has genuinely graced the humble theme by 
 throwing a halo of sanctity and self-sacrifice about the 
 "pious mistress." Jn what he calls a digression from the 
 story of Dawkins and his orphaned children, he draws a 
 sympathetic picture of the matron who assumed the care 
 of the youngest orphan. He chooses the moment at the 
 close of a summer day when she has dismissed her charges, 
 and "frugal of light" sits knitting before her cottage door, 
 and "of time as frugal" reads her Bible while she knits. 
 "In pure respect" the village lads "walk silent on the grass" 
 when they observe her as she closes the day with prayer. 
 
 Crabbe had but scant respect for the poor discarded 
 Clelia who finally attempted to eke out a living as matron. 
 The terse comment with which he dismisses her, that "na- 
 ture gave not talents fit for rule," again serves to emphasize 
 the fact that the inculcation of fear was the chief object of 
 the discipline of a village schoolmistress (The Borough, 
 Letter XV). 
 
EDUCATION 205 
 
 Crabbe's heartfelt lines on the "letter-loving dame" who 
 had taught him his letters, but who was in the closing years 
 of her life dependent on the charity of her former charges, 
 shows that the teacher in a dame's school was often held 
 in high respect. She had inoculated her pupils with the con- 
 viction that ''learning is better worth than house or land." 
 Half the wealthy and weighty men who rule the borough 
 "own the matron as the leading cause" of their success in 
 life. Because they feel the "pleasing debt," she is not com- 
 pelled to close her useful life in a crowded institution of 
 charity, by implication the fate of many dames ; but 
 
 To her own house is borne the week's supply ; 
 There she in credit lives, there hopes in peace to die. 
 
 The poet's further personal tribute lovingly recalls in detail 
 the pains she took with him in the first steps of learning. 
 
 Can I mine ancient Widow pass unmoved? 
 Shall I not think what pains the matron took, 
 When first I trembled o'er the gilded book? 
 How she, all patient, both at eve and morn. 
 Her needle pointed at the guardian horn ; 
 And how she soothed me, when, with study sad, 
 I laboured on to reach the final zad? 
 
 (The Borough, Letter XVII) 
 
 Such tributes are exceptional in our period. iWhen we 
 recall the lines of Pope on the masters of the great endowed 
 schools, and West's arraignment not only of their methods, 
 but also of their personal habits, together with the strictures 
 of Langhorne, Lloyd, and Jago, it is refreshing to come upon 
 Lovibond's tribute to his classical master. Lovibond eulo- 
 gizes him in at least three poems. Johnson says that "the 
 initiatory part of his education Edward Lovibond received 
 from the Rev. Mr. Woodeson, of Kingston, upon Thames, 
 for whom he ever retained an almost filial affection : a cir- 
 
206 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 cumstance which is equally honorable to the pupil and the 
 preceptor." Lovibond's Verses (written after passing 
 through Findon, Sussex, 1768) are addressed to his master, 
 who was born at Findon. Lovibond's genuine respect for 
 his teacher becomes clear in this graceful tribute. In the 
 perennial eighteenth-century discussion of the comparative 
 merits of domestic and school education, such a personal 
 tribute gives concrete evidence of the success of private 
 tuition. 
 
 His master "was one of those amiable beings whom 
 none could know without loving. To the abilities of an 
 excellent scholar was united a mind so candid, so patient, 
 so replete with universal benevolence, that it glowed in 
 every action. His life was an honor to himself, to religion, 
 to human nature. He preserved to his death such simplicity 
 of manners as is rarely to be met with. He judged of the 
 world by the standard of his own virtuous heart; and few 
 men who had seen such length of days ever left it so little 
 acquainted with it." The unworldly qualities of his master 
 stand out against the unpleasant characteristics emphasized 
 in the poetry of the period : 
 
 Thou wert not born to plough the neighbouring main. 
 
 Or plant thy greatness near Ambition's throne ; 
 Or count unnumbered fleeces on thy plain: 
 
 — The Muses loved and nursed thee for their own! 
 
 And twined thy temples here with wreaths of worth, 
 
 And fenced thy childhood from the blights of morn, 
 
 And taught enchanting song, and sent thee forth 
 To stretch the blessing to an age unborn. 
 
 In the poem he wrote upon the occasion of his former mas- 
 ter's house being converted into a poor-house, Lovibond 
 recalls the ''gracious children, and the faithful wife" who 
 welcomed him at their ''social board." There in "Simplici- 
 ty's abode" 
 
EDUCATION 207 
 
 the good teacher held by turns to youth 
 The blaze of fiction and pure light of truth, 
 Who, less by precept than example fired, 
 Glowed as he taught, inspiring and inspired. 
 
 Lovibond writes of nature polished by "classic art" ; yet the 
 virtue of the place lies in its having been in his day ''Sim- 
 plicity's abode," 
 
 Where smiling hinocence looked up to God ; 
 
 Where Nature's genuine graces charmed the heart. 
 
 The influence of Rousseau is clear also in the Dedication 
 of Julias Letter: 
 
 thou who sitst in academic schools. 
 
 Less teaching than inspiring ancient art, 
 Thy own example nobler than their rules, 
 
 Thy blameless life best lesson for the heart. ^ 
 
 In 1798 Lancaster's Borough Road School advertised ad- 
 vanced doctrine with which many elementary schools in 
 Great Britain have not caught up even today. - In that school, 
 honorary orders of merit were worn until they were for- 
 feited by misbehaviour, the "forfeiture being in lieu of 
 
 1 Compare William Whitehead's To the Rev. Dr. Louth: 
 
 So let me still with filial love pursue 
 The muse and parent of my infant thought, 
 From whence the color of my life I drew, 
 When Bigg presided, and when Burton taught. 
 
 - Compare Dr. Johnson's remarks on Mr. Hunter, his head- 
 master: ''He used ... to beat us unmercifully; and he did not 
 distinguish between ignorance and negligence; for he would beat a 
 boy equally for not knowing a thing, as for neglecting to know it." 
 But he also said of him : "My master whipt me very well. Without 
 that, Sir, I should have done nothing." Concerning Dr. Rose's 
 lenient methods, Johnson remarked : "There is now less flogging in 
 our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so 
 that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other." (Bos- 
 well's Johnson). 
 
208 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 corporal punishment." Less than five years after this an- 
 nouncement, Barrow was irritated by observing that some 
 schools preferred not to flog. He contends that the acqui- 
 sition of learning must always be laborious and that only 
 the authority of the teacher can confine his pupil to irk- 
 some and continued application. By authority he means 
 flogging : ''Yet perhaps without the use or the fear of it not 
 a single scholar was ever made." With such doctrine de- 
 liberately promulgated even during the liberalizing age of 
 romanticism, it is small wonder that Fielding, who had a 
 tender feeling for Eton, should associate his schooldays 
 there with the birch rod: "To thee at thy birchen altar 
 with true Spartan devotion have I sacrificed." ^ Cowper 
 characterizes school life as the "whip-gig state" in Hope, 
 and in The Valediction alludes to Colman, 
 
 Thy schoolfellow and partner of thy plays 
 
 (Where-,' Nichol swung the birch and twined the bays. 
 
 In The Progress of Error he is more explicit : 
 
 Plants raised with tenderness are seldom strong, 
 Man's coltish disposition asks the thong, 
 And without discipline the favourite child, 
 Like a neglected forester, runs wild. 
 
 The poets, however, do not as a rule treat the custom of 
 flogging with the lightheartedness of the great novelist. 
 Chatterton's indignant infant muse would give advice to men 
 when it calls the education of his day the "offspring illegi- 
 timate of Pain," an accusation hardly stronger than West's 
 condemnation of persecuting "free-created souls with penal 
 terror's awe." 
 
 1 Compare Tom Jones: for Partridge, the barber and school- 
 master; and also for Thwackum. Note also Smollett's diverting 
 paragraphs on flogging in Peregrine Pickle, and his delineation of 
 schoolmasters and tutors in Keypstick, Jennings, and Jolter. 
 
EDUCATION 209 
 
 The evidence of poets that educational methods are co- 
 ercive rather than directive is corroborated by the statutes 
 of endowed and other schools. The ordinances of Chigwell 
 School (Essex) direct, ''That for speaking English in the 
 Latin School, the Scholar be corrected with the Ferula : and 
 for swearing, with the Rod." The Regulations at Witton, 
 near Northwitch (Chester), stipulate: "3rd In inflicting per- 
 sonal chastisement, he shall use only the Cane, except in 
 cases of gross misbehaviour, when the Trustees must be 
 consulted as to any other punishment." The "P. W." note 
 which explains the "dreadful wand" held by the spectre in 
 the Dunciad, informs the reader it was "a cane usually borne 
 by Schoolmasters, which drives poor souls about like the 
 wand of Mercury." That the elementary schools were 
 conducted according to the doctrine of fear finds an almost 
 amusing illustration in the Reports of the Society for Bet- 
 tering the Condition of the Poor: "Both of the m. stresses are 
 enjoined to treat the children tenderly ; and not to use the 
 rod, except in cases of necessity. But, in order to reconcile 
 their young minds to flogging, when necessary, several 
 sayings of King Solomon are put in a conspicuous part of 
 the schools, and read once a quarter, so as to attract their 
 attention and shew them the advantage of their being whipt." 
 
 The reactionary Somerville does not frown upon such 
 pedagogical methods, but takes it as a matter of course that 
 Gamaliel "with ruling rod trains up his babes of grace." 
 His observations are good natured and tolerant, although 
 he realizes that genius can not be forced in the schools. It 
 is very plain that an ape can not be made an alderman, even 
 by the redoubtable master at Westminster. 
 
 But, by your leave, good doctor Freind, 
 
 When maggots once are in the brain, 
 Whole loads of birch are spent in vain. 1 
 1 The Fortune-Hunter. 
 
210 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The conservative Doctor Johnson unsuccessfully de- 
 fended Hastie, schoohnaster of Campbelltown, by contend- 
 ing that "no scholar had gone from him either blind or lame, 
 or with any of his limbs or powers injured or impaired." 
 And Cowper wrote that a person who obstinately held to 
 ''mulish folly" and would not be reclaimed by softer meth- 
 ods, must be made ashamed. Poets in general, however, 
 showed nothing but indignation or contempt for flogging. 
 In Carnziforth School (1769) Graeme speaks of rescuing 
 ''Defenceless childhood from the scourge of age." Jenyns 
 may contend that sages must be "cudgelled into sense," but 
 in The Dean and the Squire Mason can not understand the 
 educational value of physical punishment when a 
 
 Pedantic schoolmaster like York, 
 Thrashes the wretch with grammar's flail, 
 To mend his head corrects his tail ; 
 And this with most despotic fury, 
 Heedless of mercy, law, and jury. 
 
 In The Fortune-Hunter, Somerville observed the same facts 
 in a more tolerant mood : 
 
 His bum was often brushed, you'll say ; 
 'Tis true; now twice, then thrice a day: 
 So leeches at the breech are fed. 
 To cure vertigos in the head. 
 
 Pope's satiric muse in the Dunciad did not overlook the 
 possibilities of the situation for a poetic castigation of school 
 methods : 
 
 The pale Boy-Senator yet tingling stands, 
 
 And holds his breeches close with both his hands. {IV) 
 
 Cawthorn's lines in Wit and Learning (1757) suggest the 
 direct and brutal attack of a master : 
 
 I'll lay thee, miscreant ! on my knee, 
 
 And paint such welks thy naked seat on, 
 
 As never truant felt at Eton. 
 
EDUCATION 211 
 
 Clara Reeve, who is usually liberal in her opinions on 
 education, says of a certain pedagogue that "he was indeed 
 too apt to use the rod, which was the ensign of his authority, 
 and made the boys rather fear than love him.'' Her sym- 
 pathies are clearly with the pupil. She found Arthur, who 
 had been severely flogged, kicking his book before him ("it 
 was Lily's Grammar") while "his heart heaved, his color 
 rose, and he burst into tears." ^ 
 
 Byrom was sufficiently enlightened to realize that fear 
 of the rod would not induce a sincere love of learning : 
 
 Homer, Virgil, Horace! (if you ask) 
 
 Why, yes, the rod would send me to my task; 
 
 But all the consultation that came out 
 
 Had its own end — to 'scape the whipping bout. 2 
 
 Barrow observed in 1802 that many masters of private 
 schools had published essays, presumably on pedagogical 
 subjects, the sole aim of which was to advertise their schools. 
 S. Johnson's Education (1771), a poem in two parts, illus- 
 trates how one master skilfully combined the traditional at- 
 titude toward the classics with the new spirit manifest in 
 poets who noticed school affairs. S. Johnson's poem de- 
 rives from Pope's Dunciad in its protest against flogging 
 
 1 Destination, vol. i, p. 72. 
 
 2 Epistle to a Friend. — In the Spectator (1711) Steele writes: 
 "I am confident that no boy who will not be allured to letters with- 
 out blows, will ever be brought to anything with them. A great 
 or good mind must necessarily be the worse for such indignities." 
 It was repugnant to Steele that boys should kneel to a blockhead 
 because of a false Latin quantity. In later life he still dreamed of 
 his master once a month and could not forget his bloody schoolboy 
 hand. (Compare Pope's "Till birch shall blush with noble blood 
 no more"; and "dropping with infant's blood.") Steele goes on to 
 say that "if you can disarm them of their rods, you will certainly 
 have your old age reverenced by all the young gentlemen of Great 
 Britain who are now between seven and seventeen." 
 
212 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 and repression, and at the same time serves to advertise 
 the author as a progressive who is acquainted with Rous- 
 seau. The edition of 1771 artfully serves the purposes of 
 poetry, pedagogy, and pubHcity. 
 
 S. Johnson conducted a school in Shrewsbury, where he 
 gave his pupils instruction in "Language, History, Geo- 
 graphy, and in the use of Globes . . . the French lan- 
 guage, and Drawing in all its branches, on the most reason- 
 able terms." His poem is very plainly an advertisement of 
 his school ; it closes with an unmistakable ad captan- 
 dum to the ladies, who as fond mothers and aunts would 
 exert no inconsiderable influence in the choice of a school. 
 This point of view, however unfavorable to art, is valuable 
 as indicating the pedagogical attitude which a capable 
 master considered attractive to the clientele of his school. ^ 
 
 S. Johnson's classical attainments are displayed in foot- 
 notes by means of quotations from Sappho, Lucretius, Pliny, 
 Cireco, Juvenal and others who are made to support his 
 trite observations on life. To show that he is at the same 
 time abreast of his generation, he quotes also from Rouss- 
 eau's Emile (1762). Rousseau's works were translated as 
 soon as published, and were widely known through reviews 
 in the magazines. Emile commanded the attention of Eng- 
 lish readers everywhere, to arouse opposition, ridicule, or, at 
 times, partial approval.- Rousseau's return to nature was 
 readily assimilated because it was in harmony with contem- 
 porary English thought. Johnson shows unmistakably that 
 in his mind the idea of giving child nature free play in 
 education is connected with Rousseau. After condemning 
 
 1 S. Johnson is, of course, not the great Samuel Johnson. 
 
 2 Compare Observations on Mr. Rousseau's New System of 
 Education with some remarks on the different translations of that 
 celebrated work. In a letter to a friend . . . London, Cadell, 1763. 
 — See also Jacques Pons, op. cit., passim, for additional titles. 
 
EDUCATION 213 
 
 the attitude of parents who force a booby son into one of 
 the learned professions, Johnson calls attention to the sinewy 
 limbs and simple mind that "nature for other purposes de- 
 signed." The word nature carries an asterisk that refers 
 the reader to Rousseau's Einile: Voulez-vous toujours etre 
 bien guide? Suivez toujours les indications de la Nature." 
 He develops his thought by indicating how many a strong- 
 limbed man curses his meddling parents for having forced 
 him to enter a profession in which he starves by his pen, 
 when he was "gifted with nerves the manly axe to wield." 
 
 List then, oh list, ye fools, to Nature's voice. 
 Thwart not her dictates, but indulge her choice. 
 She plainly shews you where her bias leans, 
 And, for the end she aims at, yields the means : 
 Be not less rational than brutes, whose young 
 Receive what culture doth to brutes belong. 
 
 The italicized phrase had Nature been obeyed occurs four 
 times in tweny-five consecutive lines. He advises the teach- 
 er that nature should be the "cynosure by which he steers." 
 Yet Johnson, like all true Britishers since the fourteenth 
 century, is suspicious of anything that comes out of France. 
 He expresses a fine scorn for the "mamma" who fetched 
 two tutors out of France, one to teach the child to mock 
 English manners and to garnish his skull while leaving the 
 mind undisturbed, and the second to teach the child to jab- 
 ber French before he quits his go-cart — ^with the result that 
 the child's brain has been neglected while his morals have 
 been corrupted. ^ Johnson's anti-Gallic attitude is as ob- 
 vious as that of Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Sherwood, al- 
 though he does not take the anti-Rousseau attitude of Clara 
 
 1 Cp. Cawthorn's Equality of Human Conditions ("spoken at 
 the annual visitation of Tunbridge School, 1746") : 
 
 While airy Belville, guiltless of a school, 
 Shines out a French edition of a fool. 
 
214 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Reeve (1799). In Destination she illustrates her point by 
 relating a story that shows the fruits of an education such as 
 that advocated by ''John James Rousseau" : "I relate this 
 true story as an antidote to the poisonous doctrine lately in- 
 culcated, that children are neither to be contradicted nor 
 corrected." 
 
 S. Johnson's poem is both an obvious and typical illus- 
 tration of the severe limitations with which Rousseau's 
 doctrines were received in England. When Johnson, near the 
 close of his poem, favors guiding the child according to his 
 natural gifts, "with tender hand to rear the infant state," 
 he again supports his line with a quotation from Emile. 
 But he loses himself immediately in the traditional pedagogy 
 devised for the institutional child : 
 
 Support its weakness, ere it run to waste, 
 
 To lop the rampant shoot, which strong and rude 
 
 Warps it from all that's beautiful and good ; 
 
 To touch the mind with emulation's flame, 
 
 With ridicule, or keener sense of shame. 
 
 His long quotations from the Dunciad, and the constant and 
 vehement denunciation of flogging, indicate that the influen- 
 ces working on him were essentially native English. It 
 was modern in 1771 to show an acquaintance with Emile, 
 and the doctrine of following nature was beginning to be 
 accepted. However limited the application of Rousseau's 
 doctrines, they nevertheless had a liberating influence that 
 accelerated the native tendency away from the nar- 
 row classical curriculum and all its abuses. The ideal Pre- 
 ceptor is one who knows 
 
 The manners of each circling age; 
 To bend not break their Minds ; their little rage 
 And humors hit; their passions how to stir; 
 When to exert the rein, when use the spur ; 
 For different Minds a different treatment ask. 
 
EDUCATION 215 
 
 Rousseau's ideal method of teaching by example and 
 guidance is favorably noticed. This was the least radical 
 of Rousseau's contentions. Yet even here Johnson can not 
 break away from traditional methods; for where he con- 
 demns flogging in the first part (The Pedant), he considers 
 it proper when used with discretion, and defends it with 
 limitations in the second part (The Preceptor). In reality 
 his objection is not to flogging, but rather to the manner of 
 administering the beating indiscriminately for the most tri- 
 vial offenses. 
 
 See innocence arraigned before his throne 
 
 For some slight error of the brain alone. 
 
 Half dead with shame, abashed, appalled he stands ; 
 
 Grief drowns his voice, while terror lifts his hands. 
 
 Lo, on his knees the little suppliant falls, 
 
 In piercing cries for mercy, mercy calls. 
 
 Oh hear him, hear him, and for once receive, 
 
 Once taste that heavenly pleasure to forgive. 
 
 "No, let him smart" replies the unfeeling clod, 
 
 "He spoils the child who spares the rod." 
 
 Oh, maxim ill applied. ^ 
 
 1 Henry Brooke, author of The Fool of Quality (1766), would 
 under any but prevailing conditions not have introduced the tutor 
 of the boys as Mr, Vindex, the symbol of whose office is "that tree 
 whose bare name strikes terror through all our seminaries of learn- 
 ing." Brooke does not hesitate to draw the character of this vin- 
 dictive example of eighteenth-century pedagogue in strong terms : 
 "Air Vindex began to assume a more expanded authority, and gave 
 a free scope to the surly terrors of his station." And again : "The 
 next day Mr. Vindex returned, doubly armed, with a monstrous 
 birch-rod in one hand, and a ferule in the other." From the author's 
 apostrophies on the wrongheadedness of this pedagogue, and from the 
 details of the story, one may get a fairly accurate conception of "the 
 three accustomed strokes." — Compare Tom Jones (Book HI, Chap- 
 ter VI) : "Castigo te non quod odio habeam, sed quod Amem. I 
 chastise thee not out of hatred, but out of love." — In Roderick Ran- 
 dom the boys bind and beat their master in the schoolroom. 
 
216 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 As is clear from poetry since the Dimciad, most peda- 
 gogues are wholly repressive in their methods. S. Johnson 
 carries on the protest against the clan, and can find no 
 word strong enough to express his contempt. The following 
 words appear in rapid succession — '"mercenary," "pedant," 
 "leaden crown," "meanest of the flogging train," "the 
 Thwackum of my age," "tigers and wolves have more hu- 
 manity," "from their limbs their tender skin you tear," 
 "barbarian," "caitiff," "scorpion." 
 
 But for the herd of pedagogues, — I know 
 Not any such pernicious weeds that grow ; 
 Like other weeds too, they aspire to curb 
 The kindly progress of each other herb. 
 
 Lancaster's attempt to abolish corporal punishment rep- 
 resents a master's liberal views after the influence of Rous- 
 seau had made itself felt in England. Schoolboys them- 
 selves finally rebelled, as in the instance of Wordsworth's 
 friend Matthews, who had attended the Merchant Tailors' 
 School where he had taken part in a revolt that led to the 
 abolition of flogging in that institution. In general, how- 
 ever, the practice continued into the nineteenth century, and 
 was defended by Doctor Arnold of Rugby. He still believed 
 in the "natural inferior state of boyhood," and held that ob- 
 jections to flogging originate in "that proud notion of per- 
 sonal independence which is neither reasonable nor Chris- 
 tian, but essentially barbarian." Dickens, who was a true 
 friend of children, and broke many a lance in their defense, 
 was able after 1830 to find fourteen types of coercion for 
 discussion in connection with his exposure of abuses in 
 English schools. ^ 
 
 Early in the century Isaac Watts had recognized the 
 value of gentleness and kindness in the guidance and edu- 
 
 ^ Dickens as an Educator by James L. Hughes. 
 
EDUCATION 217 
 
 cation of children. He was quick to recognize these 
 quahties in a schoohnaster Hke his friend Thomas Rowe, to 
 whom he addressed the poem To the much-honoured Mr. 
 Thomas Roz(je, the Director of my Youthful Studies. But 
 whereas he praises Rowe for the quahties Lovibond saw in 
 Woodeson, much of the emphasis is still, because of the 
 age in which the poem was written, on the negative element 
 of protest against the binding customs and magic chains of 
 the schools. Berkeley, on the other hand, leaves Europe be- 
 hind as hopelessly old and fixed in her ways. In Verses 
 on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America, 
 written about 1726, and published in 1752, he looks to the 
 new world, youthful and strong, to redress the educational 
 grievances of the old world. He would make a new start 
 that is impossible under prevailing conditions in Europe. 
 
 In happy climes, the seat of Innocence, 
 
 Where nature guides and virtue rules, 
 
 Where men shall not impose for truth and sense 
 The pendantry of courts and schools : 
 
 There shall be sung another golden age. 
 
 The rise of empire and of arts, 
 The good and great inspiring epic rage. 
 
 The wisest heads and noblest hearts. 
 Not such as Europe breeds in her decay ; 
 
 Such as she bred when fresh and young, 
 When heavenly flame did animate her clay. 
 
 Although no practical reforms seem to have been made in 
 the schools, poets had definitely cleared the way for Words- 
 w^orth's statement of a plan for national education of the 
 masses. Wordsworth's denunciation of the state's neglect 
 of its children is no stronger, however, than his strictures on 
 the educational fads reflected in the many systems of home 
 education which were devised to take the place of the 
 
218 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 discredited established curriculum before the days of na- 
 tionally supervised common schools. To understand his 
 attitude toward the education of children, it is essential 
 to note the comment of poets on books and reading matter 
 for children. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 
 
 Except for William Blake's Songs of Innocence, litera- 
 ture intended for children is as dreary at the close as at the 
 opening of the century. Various forces at work through- 
 out the century, but with special vigor at the opening and 
 close, had as their avowed object the making over of the 
 child according to preconceived ideas and plans of a moral 
 and religious nature. The Society for the Promotion of 
 Christian Knozvledge had as its province the inculcation of 
 religious and moral precepts among children of the Estab- 
 lishment and, in many instances, of dissenting communities 
 also. The restless activities in dissenting circles had as 
 their chief object the salvaging of the souls of children 
 from the grip of the Devil and all his forces. During the 
 last quarter of the century, the results of awakened inter- 
 est in scientific matters were painfully obvious in literature 
 intended for children. These publications reveal clearly a 
 tendency to secularize subject matter, but in method show 
 a propagandist spirit that had as its objective the making 
 over of the child into a young savant. In other words, the 
 child at the close of the century was still nurtured on the in- 
 stitutional plan. Where Isaac Watts in the first quarter 
 had been stimulated by religious ideals, Mrs. Barbauld, 
 Aikin, Day, and the Edgeworths in the last quarter were in 
 addition fired by enthusiasm for moral tales which incor- 
 porated natural science. Even Newberry, in the middle of 
 the century, was not altruistic in combining the functions 
 of a publisher of children's books with those of a dispenser 
 of patent medicines ; and his stories had also their reward 
 
220 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 for virtue, and punishment for evil. Unfortunately, Blake's 
 peculiar methods of publication restricted his audience to 
 such an extent that his delightful lyrics for children could 
 not seriously compete with less worthy publications. 
 
 While Prior was developing complimentary verse on 
 childhood to its highest perfection in the classicist manner, 
 and while Swift was composing stinging satires on the me- 
 chanical use of childhood, non-conformist writers were car- 
 rying on propaganda from which emerged in 1720 the 
 Divine Songs for Children and Moral Songs of Isaac 
 Watts. For a proper understanding of this epoch-making 
 contribution to poetry on childhood, it is necessary to notice 
 briefly the religious and social environment from which it 
 sprang. 
 
 The characteristic mood of the non-conformists was one 
 of gloom. The doctrine of election led them to practice 
 introspection in order to discover conformity with the 
 wishes of God. They feared the wrath of God because of 
 their sinful nature. Original sin was more than a doctrine ; 
 it was a grim reality that stood between them and eternal 
 salvation. Like Donne and his followers in the seventeenth 
 century, they were preoccupied with death and the grave. 
 In their essentially ascetic outlook, the life of the senses 
 was an evil to be avoided if they wished to escape hell fire. 
 They did not allow themselves even the natural love of 
 children, ''those tempting things." At the end of the first 
 section of Watts's Horae Lyricae are certain poems "pe- 
 culiarly dedicated to Divine Love." The first of the group 
 has the title The Hazard of Loving the Creatures. Watts 
 pursues the argument that whatever love is given to 
 friends and relatives leaves so much less for God. Men 
 must control natural instincts in the interests of salvation. 
 This is especially necessary in relation to children. 
 
children's books 221 
 
 Nature has soft and powerful bands, 
 
 And Reason she controls; 
 While children with their little hands 
 
 Hang closest to our souls. 
 
 Thoughtless they act th' old Serpent's part; 
 
 What tempting things they be! 
 Lord, how they twine about our heart, 
 
 And draw it ofif from thee ! 
 
 Face to face with grim spiritual realities, it was essential 
 that man should fight sin at the source. Salvation was 
 conditioned upon the realization of one's sinful nature. In 
 his thirty-ninth sermon, on the Right Improvement of Life, 
 Watts warns his congregation that "this is the time that 
 was given you for your reconciliation with God, and secur- 
 ing vour everlasting interest. All the elect are born into 
 this world sinful and miserable. ... We are all, by na- 
 ture . . . under sentence of condemnation." The child is 
 born sinful ; therefore it must be made to realize the pre- 
 carious state in which it lives. It becomes the duty of 
 parents to instruct their children. The growing soul of the 
 parent, doubled in wedlock, and multiplied in children, 
 
 Stands but the broader mark for all the mischiefs 
 That rove promiscuous o'er the mortal stage. 
 
 That parents might not become slack in this fundamental 
 matter, clergymen exhorted them in sermons, and as prac- 
 tical helps wrote manuals for use with children. It is at 
 this point that we meet Janeway in the seventeenth century 
 and Watts in the eighteenth. ^ 
 
 1 See John Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, 
 vol I p 184 Ashton quotes from the lost and found columns of 
 a periodical: 'Taken from a child, a gold chain with this motto, 
 Memento Mori." 
 
222 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 As the writer of this study holds in his hand a Httle yel- 
 low book, wrinkled and faded with age, there rises from 
 its pages a spirit of earnestness and rigid duty — a gloomy 
 sincerity of purpose. It was written by James Janeway, 
 and is entitled A Token for Children, being an exact ac- 
 count of the conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lizfes and 
 Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children ( 167 1- 1672). 
 
 In this little manual for children, Janeway appeals to 
 parents: 'Take some time daily to speak a little to your 
 children one by one about their miserable condition by na- 
 ture. I know a child that was converted by this sentence 
 from a godly schoolmistress in the country : 'Every mother's 
 child of you are by nature children of wrath.' Put your 
 children upon learning their catechism, and the Scriptures, 
 and getting to pray and weep by themselves after Christ." 
 Janeway is sufficiently specific and picturesque to command 
 attention: ''And dare you neglect so direct a command? 
 Are the souls of your children of no value? Are you will- 
 ing that they should be brands of hell ? Are you indifferent 
 whether they be damned or saved? Shall the devil run 
 away with them without control? Will you not use your 
 utmost endeavor to deliver them from the wrath to come?" 
 And he proceeds more directly to children themselves by 
 stating, "They are not too little to die. . . . They are not 
 too little to go to hell." Example One contains these sen- 
 tences : "Miss Sarah Howley — when she was between eight 
 and nine years old, was carried by her friends to hear a 
 sermon, where the minister preached upon Mat. 11, 31 — 
 My yoke is easy and my burden is light. In the applying 
 of which Scripture, this child was highly awakened, and 
 made deeply sensible of the condition of her soul." In the 
 following sentence there is direct testimony to show what 
 was expected of children at the age of eight: "O mother, 
 
children's books 223 
 
 said she, it is not any particular sin of omission or commis- 
 sion, that sticks so close to my conscience, as the sin of my 
 nature ; without the blood of Christ, that will damn me." 
 
 The poems of Isaac Watts were composed in this tra- 
 dition. 'Several of his songs persist in twentieth-century 
 anthologies of children's lyrics. He has a niche in the 
 ''Lives" of Johnson, who in the condescending manner he 
 often assumed toward schoolmasters and matters pertain- 
 ing to children, holds that Watts is "at least one of the few 
 poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely 
 pleased." Taking further notice of the divine's preoccu- 
 pation with childhood, Johnson writes that Watts "condes- 
 cended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, 
 to write little poems of devotion, and systems of instruction, 
 adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of 
 reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of 
 Hfe. Every man, acquainted with the common principles 
 of human action, will look with veneration on the writer, 
 who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making 
 a catechism for children in their fourth year. A voluntary 
 descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest 
 lesson that humility can teach." He credits Watts with 
 having overcome the blunt, coarse, and inelegant style of 
 the dissenters by showing them that "zeal and purity might 
 be expressed and enforced by polished diction." It was 
 by Johnson's recommendation that the poems of Watts were 
 included in the collection for which Johnson wrote his 
 "Lives." 
 
 Watts was indeed an innovator. He defied Calvinistic 
 tradition in many ways, but always successfully, as the 
 vogue of his books in the eighteenth century indicates. In 
 composing his hymns it was necessary to ignore the em- 
 bargo Calvin had laid on everything but metrical psalms 
 and canticles. Although hampered also by the dearth of 
 
224 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 tunes, his hymns, many of them for children, took the dis- 
 senting world by storm. He gave '*an utterance, till then 
 unheard in England, to the spiritual emotions, and made 
 hymn singing a fervid devotional force." The Divine 
 Songs for Children and Moral Songs (1720), which ran 
 through one hundred editions before 1750, was, according 
 to Canon Leigh Bennett, the first child's hymn book in Eng- 
 lish. ^ This path-breaking collection is made up of thirty- 
 six songs, the book being directed to "all that are concerned 
 in the education of children." The opening sentence of his 
 Preface reminds one of the seriousness of Janeway. *Tt is 
 an awful and important charge that is committed to you." 
 Then follow paragraphs of apology for the use of verse. 
 His third reason is to the point: "This will be a constant 
 furniture for the minds of children, that they may have 
 something to think upon when alone, and sing over to them- 
 selves. This may sometimes give their thoughts a divine 
 turn, and raise a young meditation. Thus they will not 
 be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind, out of the 
 loose and dangerous sonnets of the age." 
 
 His titles indicate the kind of furniture Watts thought 
 fit for little minds. Some are of a general nature : General 
 Song of Praise to God, Praise for Creation and Providence, 
 Praise for the Gospel, Excellency of the Bible. These are 
 phrased in simple diction adapted to children. Then fol- 
 low more specific subjects, in a more imaginative strain, 
 Praise for Mercies Spiritual and Temporal, for instance. 
 
 How many children in the street 
 
 Half naked I behold! 
 While I am clothed from head to feet, 
 
 And covered from the cold. 
 
 1 But compare Bishop Ken's "Manual of Prayers for Win- 
 chester Scholars" (1674), and "Hymns for Morning, Evening, and 
 Midnight" (1695). 
 
CHILDREN S BOOKS 
 
 225 
 
 Patriotism is inculcated in Praise for Birth and Education 
 in a Christian Land: 
 
 'Tis to thy sovereign grace I owe 
 That I was born on British ground; 
 Where streams of heavenly mercy flow, 
 And words of sweet salvation sound. ^ 
 
 I would not change my native land 
 For rich Peru with all her gold; 
 A nobler prize lies in my hand, 
 Than East or Western Indies hold. 
 
 Practical application of moral precepts to the daily life 
 of children is made in Against Lying, Love Betiveen 
 Brothers and Sisters, Against Scoffing and Calling Names, 
 Taking God's Name in Vain, Against Idleness and Mischief, 
 Evil Company, Pride in Clothes, and Obedience to Parents. 
 Of this group, Against Quarreling and Fighting has per- 
 sisted to our day. 
 
 Let bears and lions growl and fight, 
 
 For God hath made them so; 
 Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 
 
 For 'tis their nature too. 
 
 But, children, you should never let 
 
 Such angry passions rise ; 
 Your little hands were never made 
 
 To tear each other's eyes. 
 
 Against Idleness and Mischief, which is also familiar, has 
 survived because its phrasing as well as its moral is neat. 
 The language and imagery are conceived in the admiring 
 mood of childhood. 
 
 2 Vain of our beauteous isle, and justly vain, 
 
 For freedom here, and Health, and Plenty reign; 
 We different lots contemptuously compare, 
 And boast, like children, of a favourite's share. 
 
 (Langhorne's Enlargement of the Mind. 1763). 
 
226 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 How doth the Httle busy bee 
 
 Improve each shining hour, 
 And gather honey all the day 
 
 From every opening flower ! 
 
 How skilfully she builds her cell ! 
 
 How neat she spreads the wax ! 
 And labours hard to store it well 
 
 With the sweet food she makes. 
 
 Even partial quotation serves to indicate his approach 
 to the child mind. The place which animals held in the 
 poetry of the century has already been noticed. Animals 
 are in fact the first active interest of children. Kipling 
 in the Jttst So Stories and the Jungle Books appealed to the 
 same keen delight of children in animal life as the early 
 Watts in the illustrative stanzas of his songs. Grimm's 
 Fairy Tales teem with animals that are often humanized 
 agents in the action. One need not look for a literary an- 
 tecedent in Aesop's Fables, which were almost universally 
 read by children at this time, or in the Bestiary, Old Testa- 
 ment prophecy, New Testament accounts of the Christ 
 child, or in the Saints Legends of the infancy of Christ. 
 The folk lore of all peoples is crowded with animals. Watts 
 was sufficiently attuned to the child mind to introduce 
 naturally the phenomena of animal life. 
 
 Children are conceived dramatically as speaking in a 
 simple didactic way. This manner is easily convincing in 
 stanzas where the illustrative matter is visualized. Bibli- 
 cal illustrations are also introduced in a homely phrasing 
 that bears witness to the imaginative vigor and simplicity of 
 the poet's style. In Love Between Brothers and Sisters the 
 first stanza suggests a picture of street brawls, and brothers 
 and sisters at peace in the home. The second stanza opens 
 with "Birds in their little nests agree." In the third he 
 speaks of clubs and naked swords, the latter not poetic li- 
 
children's books 227 
 
 cense, as swords were carried at that time. Watts adheres 
 to his purpose of sinking the language to the level of a 
 child's understanding. As he is careful to avoid artificial 
 adornment, so he usually succeeds in bringing forward Bib- 
 lical instances in colloquial and idiomatic phrasing: 
 
 The Devil tempts one mother's son 
 
 To rage against another; 
 So wicked Cain was hurried on 
 
 Till he had killed his brother. 
 
 Watts was professedly liberal in his conception of a body 
 of verse for children. ''So that you will find here nothing 
 that savours of a party ; the children of high and low de- 
 gree, of the Church of England or Dissenters, baptized in 
 infancy, or not, may all join together in these Songs." His 
 songs nevertheless were conditioned by the sectarian no- 
 tions of his immediate public. It conceived of all poetry 
 as vain and dangerous, and preferred the flattest transla- 
 tions of the psalms, sung in tunes of equal dullness. Watts 
 himself takes note of the narrower view of life while medi- 
 tating in a grove, when he warns off vain thoughts by say- 
 ing that no Phyllis shall infect the air with her unhallowed 
 name. The sterner elements of Janeway come to the sur- 
 face in such songs as Solemn Thoughts of God and Death, 
 Heaven and Hell, and Danger of Delay. In Scoffing and 
 Calling Names the grim reality of the anthropomorphic con- 
 ception comes out when the child is made to exclaim 
 
 Great God, how terrible art thou 
 To sinners e'er so young! 
 
 The limitations of the pessimistic traditions that he in- 
 herits lead Watts, as in Danger of Delay, into unrelieved 
 glooms. Children for whom he intended his songs were 
 not permitted to live in a delightful period which is made 
 
228 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 happy through the absence of self-consciousness and ig- 
 norance of life. The child is led to ask why it should 
 say that it is yet too early to think of death, for a flower 
 may fade before noon, and the child may die this day. 
 
 'Tis dangerous to provoke a God ! 
 
 His power and vengeance none can tell ; 
 
 One stroke of his Almighty rod 
 
 Shall send young sinners quick to Hell. 
 
 It is this strain in Watts that has led writers on children 
 to class him as of the revengeful school. Tradition and 
 environment were again too strong for him in the beau- 
 tiful Cradle Hymn, which he need not have printed apolo- 
 getically at the end of his collection of songs. The poem 
 shows the conflict between the gentle love of the man Watts 
 and the theology of the sectarian Watts. The lovely open- 
 ing stanza with its delicate conception of the infant and the 
 blessing gently falling upon it, shades into less appealing 
 emotions of the mother who becomes incensed over the 
 ''cursed sinners" who could provide nothing but a manger 
 for their lord. It makes her angry to read the shameful 
 story of how the Lord was abused. She tells her infant 
 that he has been saved from '* burning flame", "bitter 
 groans", and "endless crying." Alice Morse Earle impa- 
 tiently dismisses the poem : "This certainly seems an ill- 
 phrased and exciting lullaby, but is perhaps what might be 
 expected is the notion of a soothing cradle hymn from a bi- 
 goted old bachelor." Although one may agree with the 
 statement in the particular instance which called it forth, it 
 is historically somewhat unfair in view of the advanced po- 
 sition taken by Watts in the composition of poems for 
 children. Severely limited as he was by his antecedents 
 and environment, Watts is not altogether a bigot either in 
 his life or in his songs for children. To be sure, his ser- 
 
children's books 229 
 
 mons and Horae Lyricac are with ''rank Geneva weeds run 
 o'er," but much in the same way and for the same reasons 
 that the work of the neo-classical poets is embellished with 
 cupids and Greek and Roman goddesses. Sprat was horri- 
 fied that Milton should have been named in a Latin epitaph 
 on the tomb of J. Philipps in Westminster Abbey, and or- 
 dered the offensive line obliterated. Although there was 
 much bitter wrangling between Puritans and the Establish- 
 ment, Watts showed his liberal spirit in that he would not 
 impose a belief in the Trinity on independent ministers, and 
 in that he was willing to surrender the doctrine of infant 
 baptism if the Baptists would forego immersion. In the 
 dismal Young Men and Maidens, Old Men and Babes a 
 parenthetical aside illuminates the man on the liberal side, 
 which could not be wholly suppressed. And as for the ac- 
 cusation that he was a bachelor, a study of eighteenth- 
 century poetry will reveal that a large part of the poetry of 
 the century was in the hands of bachelor poets. 
 
 In the encyclopedic nature of his mind Watts was a true 
 son of the eighteenth century. Every possible phase of his 
 parishioners' education, even to the minutiae of their amuse- 
 ments, was noticed by him. His range lies from an essay 
 on the art of reading and writing English with a variety 
 of instructions for true spelling, to an attempt at a Brief 
 System of Ontology. He wrote on ''A Preservation from 
 the sins and follies of Childhood and Youth, or a brief ac- 
 count of the sins, vices, and frailties to which Childhood 
 and youth are liable," etc. He composed prayers for the 
 use of children. They are graded carefully from child- 
 hood to youth. In verse and prose he provided for his 
 parishioners a visualization of their aspirations, desires, ex- 
 periences, and theological convictions, from the cradle to 
 the time of their appearance before the throne of the Al- 
 
230 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 mighty. We come upon cradle songs, elegies, sick-bed 
 prayers, didactic pieces, and hymns of praise. In all of 
 these there are unmistakable signs of a true appreciation of 
 childhood and a recognition of the interests of children. 
 Considered from the purely secular point of view, warped 
 as the man is by professional and theological preoccupa- 
 tions, and conditioned and limited as he is by tradition, 
 so that we find children innocently playing the tempter's 
 part, fearing eternal doom, or drawing the heart of man 
 from a Calvinistic conception of God, yet amid the gloom 
 of the Mourning-Piece they are 
 
 Children, those dear young limbs, those tenderest pieces, 
 Of your own flesh, those little other selves. 
 How they dilate the heart to wide dimensions. 
 
 Such phrasings, imbedded as they often are in brim- 
 stone lines that Mrs. Trimmer eliminated when she com- 
 piled his songs at the close of the century, make Watts an 
 exceptional figure during the first half of the century. His 
 own limitations were clear to him: ''May some happier 
 genius promote the same service that I proposed, and by 
 superior sense, and sweeter sound, render what I have writ- 
 ten, contemptible and useless." What is no longer con- 
 genial has been superseded. Four of the thirty-six songs 
 for children are still widely read in contemporary antho- 
 logies of children's verse, and others are occasionally quoted. 
 
 In addition to extensive catechetical exercises in the 
 schools, children were subjected to cross-examination at 
 home. Such a secular publication as Defoe's Family In- 
 structor, which achieved a nineteenth edition in 1809, re- 
 flects the pitiless self-analysis indicated in the songs of 
 Watts. The dialogue in which Defoe carries on his in- 
 struction is divided into three parts : i ) Father and Child ; 
 2) Mother and Child; 3) Husband and Wife. It was De- 
 
CHILDREN S BOOKS "' 
 
 foe's belief that the questions asked are "proper even to a 
 child . . the author has tendeavdred to produce the 
 question with an air of mere nature, innocence, and child- 
 hood and the child's understanding may justly be 
 supposed to have proposed them . . . our child asks but 
 very little of his father, but what a child of that age may be 
 very capable of asking." While catechising the child, De- 
 foe has his eye on the sins of the father also, for at one 
 point in the dialogue we find an aside to the efifect that here 
 the child cries, and the father blushes, o^r at least he ought to 
 have done so. Upon the mention of eternal hell fire, con- 
 viction works in the child, and it weeps. There ,s the 
 pitifully natural plea of the child, "I be'nt big enough yet. 
 A typical question put into the mouth of the child is: 
 ••What will become of me then, father, if I was wicked when 
 I was born?" That the language is not altogether level 
 with the child's comprehension is clear from the father s 
 definition of faith : "And faith, child, is a fiducial, filial con- 
 fidence " Defoe's prose has all the gloom, but none of the 
 simplicity and occasional charm of Watts's poetry for cliil- 
 
 "^^The inherent interest of mankind in supernatural life 
 and the romantic attraction of things outside and beyond 
 the experiences of mortal life, were not satisfied in other 
 than dissenting circles by theological explanations o a 
 personal devil who interfered in the life of man. The ter- 
 rible realities of the concrete Calvinistic conceptions, and 
 their immediate application to the commonest activities of 
 children, precluded an appeal to the imaginative play in- 
 terest of children. In fact, one of the chief incentives of 
 Watts was the hope that his poems would serve as a sub- 
 stitute for secular works that fell into the hands of Dis- 
 
232 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 senting children. Among men of letters of a different cast, 
 the kind of play interest that children find in goblins and 
 fairies was condemned as out of harmony with the dictates 
 of reason. In the estimation of Buckingham, the light of 
 plain reason, which was spread by Hobbes, banished such 
 fantastic forms as ghosts ; after Hobbes, men no longer '*in 
 dark ignorance lay." And what the classicist poets thought 
 of ''Gothic night" as applied to all ages but their own is 
 well known. Although it would seem that between the 
 dissenters on the one hand and the followers of the en- 
 lightenment on the other, the opportunities for a child's 
 imaginative escape were slim, nevertheless poets bear wit- 
 ness down through the century to the presence of fairies, 
 outlaws, witches, and other wonders that appeal to child- 
 hood in all ages. While the fashionable literature of the 
 metropolis was flourishing in the reign of Anne and the 
 first George, a love of Spenser and Shakespeare and Milton 
 was growing. The popular ballads were noticed even by 
 Addison in the famous comment on Chevy Chase. While 
 this literary leaven was at work in high places, the humble 
 ballads hawked by chapmen, and the chap books themselves, 
 kept alive ancient folk traditions of fairies, witches, and 
 ghosts. 
 
 At the cottage fireside and at the nurse's knee, highborn 
 and cottage children alike kept continuously in touch with 
 the marvelous and supernatural. Age-old tales, "To cheat 
 our children with to rest," persisted during the days before 
 the brothers Grimm collected them in book form. Even 
 the moral Cotton hoped that his didactic pieces would have 
 the pulling power of fairy tales : ''like fairy tales to please 
 the child." John Gilbert Cooper saw fairies and elves 
 capering about the banks of Trent. Young's Epistle to Lord 
 Landsdowne exalts Shakespeare at the expense of Corneille. 
 
children's books 233 
 
 Young thinks of the self-conscious artistry of Corneille after 
 every scene, but of Shakespeare only after the fall of the 
 curtain, so great is his verisimilitude : 
 
 His witches, fairies, and enchanted isle, 
 Bid us no longer at our nurses smile. 
 
 Johnson says that Collins ''loved fairies, genii, giants, and 
 monsters ; he delighted to rove through the meanders of 
 enchantment." William Erskine's continuation of the Ode 
 Oft the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland 
 weaves in the popular superstition of changelings. 
 
 Soft o'er the floor the treacherous fairies creep, 
 
 And bear the smiling infant far away ; 
 
 How starts the nurse, when, for her lovely child 
 
 She sees at dawn a gaping idiot stare. 
 
 O snatch the innocent from the demons wild, 
 
 And save the parents fond from fell despair. 
 
 Mackenzie may write of Gothic jargon, but in The Old Maid 
 he notices goblins, and his Old Maid depends on her fairy 
 tales, which compete with fables, to attract children. 
 
 Tho' ne'er from her embrace had children sprung, 
 
 Yet alien imps with kindness would she greet, 
 And oft with pleasure heard the lisping tongue, 
 
 And gave the promised meed of candied sweet ; 
 And oft the tale of wonderment she told, 
 
 Of Fayes, that gambled o'er the circly ground. 
 And birds, that taught the moral lore of old, 
 
 Then strewed the snowy comfits all around ; 
 Thilk would she see them glean with looks of grace. 
 
 And stroked the flaxen pole, and blessed the smiling face ! 
 
 James Grahame in Sabbath Walks notes how 
 
 Children would run to meet him on his way, 
 And lead him to a sunny seat, and climb 
 His knee, and wonder at his oft-told tales. 
 
 (An Autumn Sabbath Walk) 
 
234 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Gray's Long Story gives an insight into the lively supersti- 
 tions of country folk who suspect "a. wicked imp, they call 
 a poet," 
 
 Who prowled the country far and near, 
 
 Bewitched the children of the peasants, 
 Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer. 
 
 And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants, i 
 
 Even Shenstone, whose countryside is most often peopled 
 with nymphs and fauns "or naiad leaning o'er her tinkling 
 urn," had attempted the story of St. Kenelm, the boy martyr. 
 But the habit of the age is too strong for him, and he soon 
 loses the romantic story in long stanzas of moralizing.^ 
 
 Like Thomas Warton, the poets very frequently found 
 the "ways of hoar antiquity" not rough and barren, "but 
 strewn with flowers" ; and publishers' announcements in- 
 dicate a persistent interest in fairy tales. The fairy element 
 creeps into the lines of Tickell, Swift, Lyttleton, Akenside, 
 and Parnell ; and Gay's portrayal of the quack doctor and 
 his mountebanks emphasizes the wide appeal of ballads like 
 Children in the Wood. Although Johnson ridiculed bal- 
 lads in his Burlesque on the "tender infant" that fell on a 
 stone and became a "squealing child," they persisted among 
 the common people and grew in popularity with cultivated 
 readers. Joseph Mather, a Yorkshire poet, has memorial- 
 ized a ballad monger who sang in taverns to advertise his 
 wares, and Wordsworth in The Prelude (V, 211) writes of 
 
 1 See Blake's illustration for this passage in William Blake's 
 Designs for Gray's Poems (reproduced full-size in monochrome or 
 colour from the unique copy belonging to His Grace the Duke of 
 Hamilton). — Oxford University Press, 1922. 
 
 2 Delight in fairies is expressed in Mary Lamb's The Fairy: 
 
 If I had such dreams, I would sleep a whole year : 
 I would not wish to wake while a fairy was near. 
 
children's books 235 
 
 ballad tunes, 
 Food for the hungry ears of little ones. ^ 
 
 No doubt many children were in the audience at the moun- 
 tebank show of Gay's quack doctor, and were deeply moved 
 by the singing of Children in the Wood. Gay, who was a 
 native of Devonshire, is sufficiently partial to homely ma- 
 terial to enlarge on the sentimental effect of this ballad. 
 While the doctor was selling his balsams and pills. Jack 
 Pudding in his "party-colored jacket" entertained the 
 country folk with songs about raree-shows and the feats of 
 Punch. 
 
 Then sad he sung the Children in the Wood ; 
 Ah ! barbarous uncle, stained with infant blood ! 
 How blackberries they plucked in deserts wild, 
 And fearless at the glittering falcon smiled : 
 The little corpse the robin-red-breasts found, 
 And strowed with pious bill the leaves around. 
 Ah ! gentle birds ! if this verse last so long. 
 Your names shall live for ever in my song. 
 
 (The Shepherd's Week, Saturday) 
 
 The last line indicates that the poet of refinement thought 
 he was doing the lowly ballad a service by memorializing 
 it to posterity. He could not know the high esteem in which 
 ballads were to be held in less than a half century. The 
 passage, coming as it does in 17 14, is remarkable for its 
 summary of the simple story, and for the poet's frankly ex- 
 pressed sympathy. He employs the ballad as more than a 
 mere literary device to be passed over in a colorless refer- 
 ence. The ballad is recognized as an emotional force in the 
 program of the mountebank, and the poet is himself car- 
 
 1 Swift's Baucis and Philemon tells of 
 
 The ballads pasted on the wall. 
 Of Joan of France and English Moll, 
 Fair Rosamond and Robin Hood, 
 The Little Children in the Wood. 
 
236 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 ried into sympathy by the details. With Lilly-biillero, the 
 Irish Trot, the Bower of Rosamond, and Robin Hood, 
 Chevy Chase is also sung with its woeful tale of 
 
 Wars to be wept by children yet unborn. 
 
 For the purposes of our study, Gay's Shepherd's Week is 
 noteworthy for its emphasis on folk lore. When child- 
 hood emerges in poetry, there emerge with it the nurse, 
 fairy tales, the schoolmistress and schoolmaster, and other 
 accessories. Gay's An Apparition, with its **nurse-invented 
 lies," is likewise of interest as showing the persistence of 
 humble matter. In it we are told some of the stories 
 which '^descend from son to son." Gay can not, of course, 
 any more than Shenstone later, escape from the moral im- 
 plications and didactic possibilities of such stories. He must 
 moralize the efficacy of Children in the Wood in bringing 
 offenders to account. In his opinion such ballads have 
 been known to arouse the *'fraudful guardian's fright" to 
 the extent of compelling him to restore illgot gains. In an 
 age that at any rate pretended to shun anything but known 
 truths, it was necessary to make the supernatural palatable 
 by calling attention to its practical value in the given in- 
 stance. 
 
 Children in the Wood was one of the most popular bal- 
 lads of the century ; poets referred to it constantly ; and the 
 chap books gave both verse and prose forms (The Most 
 Lamentable and Deplorable History of the Tnfo Children 
 in the Wood), with at least one instance of a variant ob- 
 viously based on the ballad : The Distressed Child in the 
 Wood; or the Cruel Unkle. ^ Wordsworth notices Chil- 
 
 ^ The traditional fairy tale motive of the cruel stepmother is 
 noticed in J. Merrick's Ode to Fancy: 
 
 And babes, who owe their shortened date 
 To cruel step-dame's ruthless hate. 
 
children's books 237 
 
 dren in the Wood in The Excursion, ^ but more winningly 
 in Redbreast Chasing the Butterfly, where he is shocked at 
 the predatory habits of the bird 
 
 That, after their bewildering. 
 Covered with leaves the little children, 
 So painfully in the wood. 
 
 It was his favorite ballad, and was noticed by him in De- 
 scriptive Sketches; he also quoted a stanza in the prefatory 
 remarks to Lucy Gray. 
 
 At the cottage fireside in Beattie's The Minstrel (1770- 
 1777), when the driving snow had shut the cottagers in, the. 
 beldam (^'instructed by tradition hoar") told stories and 
 sang ballads while the nut-brown ale went the rounds. She 
 told of moonlight revels of the fairies. 
 
 Or hags, that suckle an infernal brood, 
 And ply in caves the unutterable trade, 
 Midst fiends and spectres, quench the Moon in blood, 
 Yell in the midnight storm, or ride the infuriate flood. 
 
 When horror had been raised to the highest pitch in the 
 staring and trembling rustics about the fire, the ballad of 
 the nut-brown maid was sung to relieve tension. Then she 
 told in a gentler strain 
 
 A tale of rural life, a tale of woes. 
 
 The orphan babes and guardian uncle fierce. 
 
 This simple story, above all others, seems to have been told 
 con am ore : 
 
 To latest times shall tender souls bemoan 
 Those helpless orphan babes by thy fell arts undone. 
 
 Like Gay, Beattie can not refrain from indicating the 
 outlines of the story, but he does so with greater realization 
 of the child element : 
 
 1 Book VII, 90. 
 
238 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Behold, with berries smeared, with brambles torn, 
 The babes now famished lay them down to die : 
 Amidst the howl of darksome woods forlorn, 
 Folded in one another's arms they lie ; 
 Nor friend nor stranger hears their dying cry. 
 
 This tale was intended especially for the child Edwin, whose 
 sense of justice it was meant to stir: 
 
 A stifled smile of stern vindictive joy 
 Brightened one moment Edwin's starting tear: 
 "But why should gold man's feeble mind decoy, 
 And innocence thus die by doom severe ?" 
 O Edwin ! while thy heart is yet sincere, 
 The assaults of discontent and doubt repel . . . 
 Nor be thy generous indignation checked, 
 Nor checked the tender tear to Misery given. 
 
 White's Childhood tells how the poet and other children 
 begged of the maid the story of the wicked guardian, and 
 of how they were moved : 
 
 At each pause we wrung our hands and wept 
 
 Sad was such tale, and wonder much did we 
 
 Such hearts of stone there in the world could be. 
 
 Charles Lamb, who loved sentiment where he found it, 
 made use of the ballad in his lines to the incomparable Sid- 
 dons. 
 
 Anon the tear 
 More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell 
 Of pretty babes, that loved each other dear. 
 Murdered by cruel Uncle's mandate fell. 
 
 Only one other ballad vies with this in popularity, and 
 that is Chevy Chase. A favorite phrase is "child unborn," 
 as in Mason's // Bellicoso: 
 
 How the child, that's yet unborn. 
 May rue Earl Percy's hound and horn. 
 
children's books 239 
 
 Wordsworth, in lines which do not appear in the Thanks- 
 giving Ode (1816) as now printed, recalls how he imbibed 
 patriotic sentiments from ballads sung to him in childhood : 
 
 Land of our fathers ! loved by me 
 Since the first joys of thinking infancy; 
 Loved with a passion since I caught thy praise 
 A Listener, at or on some patient knee. 
 With an ear fastened to rude ballad lays. 
 
 It was in fact at some nurse's or mother's knee, or with 
 the father at the evening fireside, that children heard wonder 
 stories and ballads. Thomson's Winter describes a cot- 
 tage background that makes clear how at the very time 
 when classical restraint in poetry was at the height of fa- 
 shion in the metropolis. Gay as a country lad could have 
 reveled in an atmosphere of romantic wonder. 
 
 Meantime the village rouses up the fire; 
 While well attested, and as well believed, 
 Heard solemn, goes the goblin story round, 
 Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all. (617-620) 
 
 What Collins writes of the highlands is true also of Eng- 
 land : 
 
 E'en yet preserved, how often may'st thou hear, 
 Where to the pole the Boreal mountains run, 
 Taught by the father, to his listening son. 
 
 Strange lays, whose power had charmed a Spenser's ear. 
 
 Tickell's Prospect of Peace anticipates the romantic fire- 
 side motive by incidental homely touches in the lines which 
 portray the returned soldier who vividly recalls his war 
 experiences. As Tickell is writing in the detached man- 
 ner of the classicists, the scene is generalized. He is not, 
 like the romanticists, attracted to the fireside material be- 
 cause of the twilight mood with which it is readily merged. 
 Neither is he interested like the romanticists in the humani- 
 tarian aspects of his material. The fond wife hugs her 
 
240 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 "rough lord" and hangs on his words while he relates 
 stories of battlefields. His children smile and tremble in 
 turn as he marks feigned trenches in the spilled wine, sets 
 the ''inverted fort" before them, and indicates how mines 
 whirled whole battalions to the skies. 
 
 The little listening progeny turn pale, 
 And beg again to hear the dreadful tale. 
 
 This is a mere glimpse, but underlying the couplet is a bit 
 of true observation that, in the desire of the children for a 
 repetition of the exciting story, is in harmony with the 
 spirit of childhood. 
 
 In A Night Piece, Mickle's winter evening musings car- 
 ry him to thoughts of grandsires who by winter firesides are 
 relating their youthful adventures with Marlborough's 
 armies. These events are remote enough to be narrated 
 in the same mood as a ''monkish tale." In this connection 
 the poet thinks of recent events that took place during the 
 Seven Years' War on the continent. These too will soon 
 be traditional matter for a fireside story to be told to 
 children. 
 
 And soon the days shall come, 
 When Prussia's hinds shall wild adventures tell 
 Of Fred'ric and his brothers, such as oft 
 The British labourer, by winter's fire, 
 Tells to his wondering children, of the feats 
 Of Arthur and his knights, and Celtic wars. 
 
 In Vicissitude the cottager is again telling stories before 
 his winter fire. While the tempests blow without, he 
 cheers the circle with heroic tales and knightly loves of 
 former days. 
 
 The long-contented evening sweet he cheers ; 
 While from his day-sport on the ice-bound stream. 
 Weary returned, with wonder and delight, 
 Unrazored youth the various legend hears. 
 
children's books 241 
 
 Thomas Penrose in the Elegy (leaving the River of 
 Plate) on members of the crew lost in the burning of a 
 warship, heightens the pathos of his Hnes by alluding to 
 the story hour : 
 
 In vain their infants' lisping tongues inquire. 
 And wait the story on their father's knee. 
 
 In Lochleven (1766), Bruce, who like Thomson looks 
 upon the cottage hearth as the symbol of peaceful con- 
 tentment and innocence, links childhood with the story 
 group. Gaping swains and children sit cozily before the 
 blazing hearth while an aged peasant relates stories of 
 other times. Bruce shows a tendency to individualize this 
 village chronicler by writing of him in the first person in a 
 mood of personal recollection, but the children are still 
 generalized as "circling round the fire." ^ 
 
 Mackenzie's Pursuits of Happiness recognizes the close 
 ties established between age and childhood during the 
 story-hour. 
 
 Where truth sat brooding, like a white-plumed dove. 
 O'er infant friendship, and o'er infant love ; 
 The fairy tale by simple nurses told. 
 And memory rushing in the songs of old. 
 
 Individualization is more closely approached in The In- 
 ventory (1786), in which Burns gives intimate glimpses of 
 the cottage household in which there are three mischievous 
 boys, 
 
 Run deils for ranting an' for noise. 
 
 One is a driver of a team, another a thresher's assistant, 
 while 
 
 Wee Davock bauds the nowt in fother. 
 
 1 In Goldsmith's The Traveller, the pilgrim ''With many a tale 
 repays the nightly bed." 
 
242 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Their father reports that he rules them with discretion, al- 
 though he must often "labor them completely." Every 
 night, and especially on Sunday, he examines them shrewdly 
 on the "questions." The poet's unconventional description 
 of Davock's recitation of his lessons from memory is con- 
 ceived with convincing detail. The little fellow is not a 
 lay figure, but a real child. His father has been persistent 
 in his nightly quizzing, 
 
 Till, faith ! wee Davock's grown sae gleg, 
 Tho' scarcely langer than your leg, 
 He'll screed you off "Effectual Calling", 
 As fast as ony in the dwalling. 
 
 The cottager's "sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess" is less 
 fully individualized by the father's remark that the features 
 of the "bonie, sweet wee lady" resemble his : 
 
 She stares the daddy in her face. 
 
 In Wilford Churchyard, White expresses a preference 
 for burial in village ground, where, unlike in city burial 
 places, the dead are respected by shepherds and cottagers. 
 
 I've seen 
 The labourer, returning from his toil, 
 Here stay his steps, and call his children round, 
 And slowly spell the rudely sculptured rhymes, 
 And, in his rustic manner, moralise. 
 
 White's thoughts turn in Clifton Grove to the fireside of 
 those who are more fortunate than he. As twilight deepens 
 into night he can no longer hear the strokes of the wood- 
 man who had been busy in the dingle since early morning. 
 In the inevitable contrast between wicked city night pleas- 
 ures and natural pastoral relaxation, he prefers the simple 
 joys of the laborer who now 
 
children's books 243 
 
 wears the social smile, 
 Released from day and its attendant toil, 
 And draws his household round their evening fire, 
 And tells the oft-told tales that never tire. 
 
 Such ancient tales did not depend solely, however, on 
 oral transmission; they were retailed for common people 
 in chap books, to which children must have had access di- 
 rectly, or indirectly, through the story-hour which would 
 adapt to their comprehension what the parent had himself 
 enjoyed in the chap books. ^ These diminutive paper-cov- 
 ered publications of twenty-four pages no doubt existed be- 
 fore 1700, but were at the height of their popularity during 
 and after the reign of Queen Anne. They flourished until 
 1800, but declined after that date with the advent of penny 
 magazines and Chambers's tracts and miscellanies. Most 
 of them emanated, in the earlier years of the century, from 
 the press of the Diceys in Aldemary Churchyard. They 
 were hawked about the country-side by itinerant pedlars 
 known as chapmen, who carried the booklets in a bag with 
 their needles and notions. Chatterton's Tervono, in Frag- 
 
 ^ Cawthorn's The Birth and Education of Genius implies oral 
 tradition as well as book material (probably chap books) : 
 Time now had rolled, with smooth career, 
 Our hero through his seventh year. 
 Though in a rustic cottage bred. 
 The busy imp had thought and read : 
 He knew the adventures, one by one, 
 Of Robin Hood and Little John; 
 Cou'd sing with spirit, warmth, and grace. 
 The woful hunt of Chevy Chace ; 
 And how St. George, his fiery nag on, 
 Destroyed the vast Egyptian dragon. 
 Chief he admired that learned piece. 
 Wrote by the fabulist of Greece, 
 Where Wisdom speaks in crows and cocks, 
 And Cunning sneaks into a fox. 
 
244 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 ment, at the age of six bartered with "the ragged chapman" 
 and won from him "every favourite taw." Children in the 
 Lake District of Cumberland no doubt looked forward to 
 the seasonal visit of the hawker. Wordsworth wrote in the 
 eighth book of The Prelude: 
 
 From far, with basket, slung upon her arm, 
 
 Of hawker's wares — ^books, pictures, combs, and pins — 
 
 Some aged woman finds her way again, 
 
 Year after year a punctual visitant ! ^ 
 
 Among the chap books were stories of edification, 
 though these were in the minority. Such is A Timely Warn- 
 ning to rash and disobedient Children, Being a strange and 
 zvonderfiil relation of a young gentleman in the Parish of 
 Stepheny in the snburhs of London, that sold himself to the 
 Devil for tzvelve years to have power of being revenged on 
 his father and mother, and how his time being expired he 
 lay in a sad and deplorable condition to the amazement of 
 all spectators. . . . Although chap books are not as a 
 rule dated, this one bears the date 1721. Chap books belong 
 to prose literature, but often they break into verse, and 
 upon occasion are wholly in verse, as, for instance. The 
 Children's Example, showing ''How one Mrs. Johnson's 
 Child of Barnet was tempted by the Devil to forsake God 
 . . . swear, tell lies, and disobey her parents ... re- 
 sisted Satan . . . with her dying speeches desiring young 
 children not to forsake God, lest Satan should gain power 
 over them." Ashton condemns this type as rubbish : 
 
 ^ Wordsworth hoped that he might be able to "produce songs, 
 poems, and little histories that might circulate among other good 
 things in this way. . . . Indeed, some of the poems which I have 
 published were composed, not without a hope that at some time 
 or other they might answer this purpose." (1808) — Quoted in Lie- 
 nemann, op. cit., p. 162. 
 
children's books 245 
 
 As this child went to school one day- 
 Through the churchyard she took her way, 
 When lo ! the Devil came and said. 
 Where are you going, pretty Maid? 
 
 After some hesitation she answered, 
 
 To school I am going, Sir (said she). 
 
 After further hesitation, which under the circumstances was 
 natural enough, she says, 
 
 "In name of Jesus I command !" 
 
 At which the Devil instantly 
 
 In flames of Fire away did fly. 
 
 The edification of these stories was probably willingly en- 
 dured for such melodramatic entrances and exits. 
 
 Although such books were bought for children, they 
 were probably less interesting to them than the more fasci- 
 nating tales of wonder and adventure mentioned in the 
 earliest notices of chap books. In 1708 the ''Weekly 
 Comedy" (Jan. 22) enumerates Jack and the Giants, The 
 King and the' Cobbler, and Toui Thumb. '^ Tn the TatJer, 
 Steele speaks through Bickerstaff, who says of his godson, 
 aged eight: '*I find he has very much turned his studies, for 
 about twelve months past, into the lives and adventures of 
 Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, The Seven 
 Champions, and other histories of the age. — He would 
 tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault 
 with the passionate temper of Bevis of Southampton, and 
 loved St. George for being Champion of England." There 
 
 1 Tom Thumb and Jack Horner are also, at least in part, 
 in verse. 
 
 Jack Horner was a pretty lad 
 Near London he did dwell, 
 His father's heart he made full glad. 
 His mother loved him well. 
 
246 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 were also stories of the diabolic, such as Dr. Faushis, the 
 long speaking title of which must have been irresistible ; of 
 superstition, as in the books interpreting dreams and moles ; 
 legendary tales like those of Robin Hood and Children in 
 the Wood; and historical tales like Fair Rosamond. The 
 favorites were, however, romantic tales like Forttmatus, 
 Reynard the Fox, Jack and the Giants, Tom Hickathrift, 
 and others mentioned by Steele. Criminal stories like that 
 of the apprentice George Barnwell (Youth's Warning Piece 
 or the Tragicall History of George Barnwell), and biogra- 
 phical accounts like those of Robinson Crusoe were equally 
 popular, easily taking the edge off the rude couplets of 
 a chap book version of Joseph and his Brethren. The eter- 
 nal longing of children for romance is faithfully reflected 
 in White's To the Genius of Romance, where the poet names 
 his favorite stories with bated breath : 
 
 Oh ! thou who, in my early youth, 
 When fancy wore the garb of truth, 
 Wert wont to win my infant feet. . . . 
 
 White mentions Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest, Greensleeve, 
 and Blue-Beard/ 
 
 Such were the delights of the eighteenth-century house- 
 hold after the pedlar's pack had been ransacked (^'humbler 
 works, the pedlar's pack supplied," Parish Register, Part I). 
 
 These are the Peasant's joy, when placed at ease, 
 Half his delighted offspring mount his knees. 
 
 (Parish Register, Part 1.) 
 
 The ''histories" carried children out of their environment 
 to ages past. The History of Thomas Hickathrift hardly 
 
 1 See Cowper (Conversation) : 
 
 Guy Earl of Warwick and fair Eleanore, 
 
 Or giant-killing Jack, would please me more. 
 
children's books 247 
 
 stood in need of advertising catches to commend it to 
 children or even to their elders : 
 
 He that does buy this Httle book, 
 Observe what you in it do look. 
 When you have read it, then may say. 
 Your money is not thrown away. 
 
 The opening sentence is characteristic in its ability to 
 transport the child into a strange world of adventure: "In 
 the reign before William the Conqueror, I have heard in 
 ancient history that there dwelt a man in the parish of the 
 Isle of Ely, in the county of Cambridge, whose name was 
 Thomas Hickathrift," and so on to the end of the romanti- 
 cally crammed sentence which is at the same time the 
 paragraph. 
 
 In addition to chap books not specifically intended for 
 their perusal, children found delight in appropriating stand- 
 ard works of literature composed for their elders. With 
 no capacity for appreciating irony or satire, child nature 
 could nevertheless satisfy its craving for adventure in 
 Gulliver s Travels; ^ and with an entire ignorance of Bun- 
 yan's allegorical intention, children might yet be fascinated 
 by the simple concreteness with which the adventures of 
 Christian are set forth. Crusoe's adventures were early 
 condensed to the limits of the chap book, but there is at the 
 same time evidence that Defoe's account found an early if 
 not immediate place in the affections of schoolboys. More 
 generous than twentieth-century librarians, those who had 
 the supervision of children's reading seem to have prac- 
 ticed what Wordsworth stated as an absolute conviction, 
 "that children will derive most benefits from books which 
 are not unworthy the perusal of persons of any age." This 
 
 1 Wordsworth read and enjoyed Gulliver's Travels at Hawkes- 
 head. 
 
248 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 attitude is in keeping with the shrewd observation attributed 
 to Dr. Johnson : "Babies do not want to hear about babies ; 
 they hke to be told about giants and castles, and of some- 
 what which can stretch and stimulate their little minds." 
 In fact, Wordsworth's adventures in the ''slender Abstract" 
 of Arabian Nights ( which may well have been a chap book 
 version), and in other tales, had in his eyes a moral value. 
 In the episode of the drowned man in Esthwaite, Words- 
 worth in The Prelude pays tribute to the genii of romance 
 for having accustomed his imagination to such scenes as 
 took place when the drowned man rose to the surface, with 
 the result that the boy was not unnecessarily frightened or 
 moved by the gruesome sight near Hawkeshead. The 
 "little yellow, canvas-covered book" may have represented a 
 truncated form akin to that of the chap books ; at any rate 
 the poet was so delighted that he saved his pocket money in 
 the hope of buying an unabridged edition of the Arabian 
 Nights. The vast growth of interest in Oriental literature 
 during the eighteenth century served to open the inex- 
 haustible storehouses of Eastern tales to the young roman- 
 ticist poet. ^ The deep impression made on Wordsworth is 
 revealed in Vaudracour and Julia, where he compares with 
 those of Arabian fiction the "wonders that were wrought" 
 for the youth in the poem. So attached were romanticist 
 poets in their youth to material from the distant past, that 
 Russell blames Cervantes for ruthlessly tearing aside the 
 veil woven by genius of yore.- 
 
 Cowper's panegyric on his childhood friend Pilgrim has 
 already been noticed. Mrs. Piozzi has left on record how 
 
 1 Consult The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth 
 Century, by Martha Pike Conant. 
 
 - Don Quixote was one of the books read frequently by chil- 
 dren in the first half of the century. 
 
children's books 249 
 
 Johnson treated Bishop Percy's httle daughter during a 
 conversation on the merits of Pilgrim s Progress, which he 
 valued highly. He asked her what she thought of the 
 book. "The child answered that she had not read it. 'No ! 
 then I would not give one farthing for you/ and he set her 
 down and took no further notice of her." Long before 
 Crabbe noticed "Bunyan's famed pilgrim" on the cottage 
 shelf, Frankhn had saved his pennies to buy a copy. 
 Southey charmingly recalls childhood hours spent with his 
 cousin Margaret in reading Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 Somerville's Fortune-Hunter bears early witness to the 
 popularity of Robinson Crusoe as a boy's book ; it supple- 
 mented the stirring tales told by the hero's nurse. His 
 imagination had been so excited that 
 
 Whate'er he read or heard of old. 
 Whate'er his nurse or Crusoe told, 
 Each tragic scene his eyes behold. 
 
 Its value as a boy's book in the schools had evidently been 
 recognized in England before Basedow in Germany and 
 Rousseau in France or the Edgeworths in England had 
 given their pedagogical approval by adopting it. At Man- 
 chester Grammar School, Robinson Crusoe was, together 
 with Swift's Gulliver, purchased for the Holiday Library 
 between 1725 and 1740, and President Samuel Johnson of 
 Columbia University included Robinson Crusoe in the un- 
 published manuscript list of his readings for the year 1735- 
 1736, when he was at the age of nine. When H. K. White 
 wrote in one of his letters (1800), "Robinson Crusoe is al- 
 lowed to be the best novel for youth in the English lan- 
 guage," he probably at the same time gave it the stamp of 
 his personal approval as well as reflected the judgment of 
 the new pedagogy. Robert Bloomfield's The Farmer s Boy 
 has the line 
 
 And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields. 
 
250 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Wordsworth had read the book, for in Enterprise he re- 
 marks upon ''the various turns of Crusoe's fate." 
 
 The Hermit, or the imparalleled Sufferings and surprising 
 adventures of Philip Quarll, of which Miss Yonge says that 
 it "comes to us with the reputation of being by Daniel De- 
 foe," and of an edition of which Edwin Pearson has found 
 notice as early as 1727, was another of the books appro- 
 priated by children. ^ It had reached a twelfth edition in 
 1780, and Crabbe noted it among the books on the cottage 
 shelf: 
 
 Of Hermit Quarll we read, in island rare, 
 
 Far from mankind and seeming far from care; 
 
 Safe from all want, and sound in every limb. 
 
 (Parish Register, Part I^ 
 
 The edition of 1786 shows the story to be a curious mix- 
 ture of the picaresque and the Rousseau love of primitive 
 simplicity and vegetative felicity. The first part, especially, 
 is in the temper of the return to nature. The second part 
 is realistic, and Quarll's matrimonial entanglements — he 
 has three wives — seem hardly to offer fit provender for the 
 youthful imagination. The third part, written in the spirit 
 of Crusoe's experiences on the island, is interspersed with 
 interpretations of dreams, prayers of thanksgiving for a 
 kind Providence, and a morbid introspective strain and 
 analysis of sin that are bound up with vehement denun- 
 ciation of worldliness and luxury, and a hatred of all things 
 French. The book contains in extended form many of the 
 themes of superstition, edification, and romantic adventure, 
 together with interest in criminal matters, to be found in 
 chap books. Voracious young readers no doubt came upon 
 it in such a window bookshelf as Wordsworth describes in 
 The Excursion. Wordsworth's and Crabbe's experience 
 
 1 Banbury Chap Books, Edwin Pearson, London, 1890. 
 
children's books 251 
 
 with borrowed books must have been typical in the decades 
 from the seventies to the nineties. Wordsworth remarks in 
 Guilt and Sorrow: 
 
 I read, and loved the books in which I read; 
 
 For books in every neighboring house I sought, 
 
 And nothing to my mind a sweeter pleasure brought. ^ 
 
 Although the roots of our highly developed modern in- 
 dustry of juvenile book publication are to be found in the 
 chap books, John Newberry was the first publisher to set 
 up as a producer of books for the amusement of children. 
 Combining the functions of a dispenser of drugs and me- 
 dicines with those of a publisher of books intended speci- 
 fically for children, Newberry flourished at the sign of the 
 Bible and Sun in Paul's Churchyard. From the fact that 
 Goldsmith and Johnson wrote for him, his activities have 
 been especially interesting to students of juvenile literature. 
 His ability to advertise his wares in the newspapers gave 
 wide circulation to his "Circle of Sciences," and to the little 
 volumes which appealed to children. Although he too 
 emphasized the moral feature common in children's books, 
 
 1 In the royal household, books were supplemented by stage 
 performances of Shakespeare's plays. Mr. J. Buncombe's On the 
 Death of Frederick Prince of Wales (1751), which is not as barren 
 as most occasional verse of its type, gives an intimate glimpse of the 
 young prince at a performance of Romeo and Juliet: 
 When late I saw thee drop a tender tear 
 Of feeling sympathy on Juliet's bier, 
 And heard thy youthful train with sighs confess 
 Humane compassion at her feigned distress. 
 Poets in general preferred the cottage setting for the story hour. 
 Mr. Duncombe's lines are conceived in a different mood : 
 No longer now, in Kew's or Cliefden's grove, 
 That prattling train shall with thee sportive rove ; 
 No more their stories shall thy walks beguile, 
 Nor thou repay those stories with a smile. 
 
252 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 his publications from 1745 onward mark the beginning of 
 juvenile publications avowedly designed to furnish amuse- 
 ment as well as instruction. 
 
 He improved on the flimsy chap book by introducing the 
 cover feature, gilt ornamentation being an added attraction. 
 His skilfully worded puffs had strong pulling power in 
 homes in which there were children. The following adver- 
 tisement appeared in the London Chronicle for Dec. 19 — 
 Jan. I, 1765 : 'The Philosophers, PoHticians, Necroman- 
 cers, and the learned in every faculty are desired to ob- 
 serve that on the first of January, being New Year's day 
 (oh, that we all may lead new lives!), Mr. Newberry in- 
 tends 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 Church- 
 yard, but those who are naughty 'to have none." ^ Later in 
 the century, the Banbury publisher. Rusher, used rhymes 
 to advertise his publications : 
 
 See Jack in his study 
 Is writing a book 
 As pretty as this is 
 In which you may look. 
 
 The price is a penny 
 For girls and for boys. 
 There's more too at Rusher's, 
 And pictures and toys. 
 
 And when with much pleasure 
 You've read them all o'er 
 Then hasten to Rusher's 
 He's printing some more. - 
 
 1 Quoted in Children's Books and Reading, by Montrose J. 
 Moses. 
 
 - Quoted by Pearson, op. cit. 
 
children's books 253 
 
 Newberry's pioneer work is notable because he published 
 Goody Two-Shoes and To^mmy Trip in a form accredited to 
 Goldsmith, whose name is therefore associated with the 
 first attempts to publish juvenile classics.^ Washington 
 Irving is severe in his censures when he writes that New- 
 berry "coined the brains of authors in the times of their 
 exigency, and made them pay dear for the plank put out to 
 keep them from drowning." Yet when Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 called at Green Arbour Court, where Goldsmith at the top 
 of Break Neck Steps and at the end of Turn Again Lane 
 wrote for children, he found this couplet : 
 
 By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, 
 The sports of children satisfy the child. 
 
 It was in these squalid surroundings that Goldsmith 
 probably edited Newberry's children's magazine The Lilli- 
 putian. Documentary evidence and receipts in Goldsmith's 
 handwriting seem to exist, showing that he wrote abridged 
 histories of England and Greece, as well as some abridg- 
 ments of Old and New Testament stories, Robinson Cru- 
 soe, Pamela, Clarissa Harlozve, and Sir Charles Grandison, 
 — all published (by NeWberry. Although it is difficult to 
 think of the good-hearted but ponderous Johnson (who was 
 accustomed to make little fishes talk like whales) in the 
 role of writer or even editor of children's books, it seems 
 that there are in the Jupp and the Hugo collections several 
 children's books edited and prefaced by him. At any rate 
 Johnson and Goldsmith must have discussed the problems 
 of writing for young readers, for Boswell recounts how 
 Goldsmith expressed the wish that he might be able to make 
 
 1 Consult Charles Welsh's facsimile of the 1766 edition of 
 Goody Two-Shoes. See also his A Bookseller of the Last Cen- 
 tury, and a good catalogue of Newberry's books for children in 
 On Some Books for Children of the Last Century. 
 
254 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 fishes, animals, and birds talk or appear to talk "for the 
 amusement of children." 
 
 The popularity of Newberry's books was greatest be- 
 tween 1750 and 1770. After this the growth and popu- 
 larity of systems of education for children, and moral tales 
 which found a place in such systems of home education, 
 tended to crowd out fairy tales and stories of adventure. 
 The pure delight in adventure for its own sake was great- 
 est throughout the middle decades of the century. The de- 
 lightful attitude expressed in Clarissa Harlozue reveals the 
 joy of children over such publications as those of New- 
 berry, which amused as much as they pedagogued. *T, 
 said she, had always, from a girl, a taste for reading, though 
 it were but Mother Goose, ^ and concerning fairies (and 
 
 1 Althoiig-h the origin of Mother Goose rhymes and their 
 popularity in England need close study before statements can be 
 made with accuracy, it seems, according to available evidence, that 
 they were of French origin. The designation "Mother Goose" is 
 first heard in the seventeenth century, when the contes were first 
 pubHshed singly, after which Perrault in 1687 published Histoires 
 oil Contes du Terns Passe avec des Moralites, the authorship of 
 which he ascribed to his son Perrault Darmancour. The frontis- 
 piece pictures an old woman regaling a group of listeners with 
 stories, and by her side is a placard on which is lettered : 
 
 CONTES 
 DE MA 
 
 MERE 
 
 LOYE 
 It seems that a translation of Perrault's contes was published in 
 English in 1729 and another in 1745, It must have been one of 
 these, or an earlier version, with which Richardson was acquainted. 
 Attempts have been made to identify Goldsmith, whose favorite song 
 is said to have been "An old woman tossed in a blanket, seventeen 
 times as high as the moon", as editor of Newberry's edition, the 
 seventh edition of which appeared in 1777. — The Mother Goose 
 rhymes suggest an early eighteenth-century origin of the English 
 version. 
 
children's books 255 
 
 then she took genteelly a pinch of snuff) : could but my 
 parents have let go as fast as I pulled, I should have been 
 a very happy creature." It was fated that fairy tales and 
 stories of adventure were to triumph as pabulum for children 
 in the nineteenth century; but they suffered a temporary 
 eclipse in the moral tales, which, although they were in- 
 tended to interest the child, were chiefly designed to instruct. 
 Written largely under the stimulus of the new pedago- 
 gical activities which resulted from the enthusiasm of Rous- 
 seau, the moral tales were nevertheless not representative 
 of the fundamentals of his teachings. As to content they 
 lean towards Rousseau in the fervid interest shown by these 
 amateurs in pedagogy in things as a substitute for mere 
 word education. But even this feature probably resulted 
 from the native spirit of protest against the classics. Moral 
 tales were practical in the sense that they utilized the results 
 of the scientific awakening that had carried children as well 
 as men into fields and woods rather than into libraries. The 
 method, however, was that of the old pedagogy. While 
 poets had been condemning exclusive attention to the clas- 
 sics and book learning, they had been careful, as is obvious 
 especially in Tirocinium, to retain the emphasis on the 
 necessity of moral training. The moral tale as exemplified 
 in one of its most popular manifestations, in Thomas Day's 
 Sandford and Mertoun (1783- 1789), was at bottom noth- 
 ing more than a small encyclopedia. ^ Scientific interest in 
 the world of natural phenomena supplied most of the subject 
 matter, but the intention was religious and humanitarian at 
 the same time that the child was crammed with facts. 
 
 1 See also Percival's A Father's Instructions (1775), and the 
 works of Mrs. Trimmer, Hannah More, Mrs. Barbauld, and the 
 Edgeworths. Sandford and Mertoun is more readable than the aver- 
 age moral tale because Day's style was obviously influenced by chap 
 books. 
 
256 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The conception of childhood even in Day and the 
 Edgeworths was still expressed in terms of the institutional 
 child. The aim was to make the child over, and the result 
 was an infant prodigy in place of the natural child who was 
 the ideal of Rousseau. Rousseau's endeavor to lose time 
 with the child before the age of twelve, finds no recognition 
 in the moral tales. Although influenced by Rousseau and 
 the new spirit, these writers were, nevertheless, proceeding 
 not on the fundamentals of Rousseau (which insisted that 
 the child was not a little man) but on the traditional plan 
 which treated him as though he had to be made over into 
 the likeness of an adult as soon as possible. The moral 
 tale was in fact a perversion or misapplication of the theo- 
 ries of Rousseau, for its sponsors proceeded with the method 
 revealed in the traditional fables which, as Somerville 
 noted early in the century, had in the happy plan of Greece 
 and Rome "taught the brute to pedagogue the man." Al- 
 though writers of moral tales substituted modern material 
 for the contents of the ancient fable, they believed with 
 Byrom (Ape and the Fox) that 
 
 Old Aesop so famous was certainly right 
 
 In the way that he took to instruct and delight. 
 
 * 
 
 He encouraged, by his fables, the attention of youth, 
 And forced even fiction to tell them the truth. 
 
 A didactic purpose is revealed on every page of a neat 
 little volume of poems issued by Marshall in a second edi- 
 tion in 1789: Poems on Various Subjects for the Amuse- 
 ment of Youth. It is bound in half calf and is illustrated 
 by attractive oval woodcuts executed by Bewick. The 
 poems, which are pervaded by the characteristic humani- 
 tarianism of the age, are written at children in a spirit of 
 undisguised didacticism. In such a poem as From a Gen- 
 
children's books 257 
 
 tleman to his San on his Confining a Bird, the intention is 
 to shame the child. 'The opening lines with their ad hoini- 
 nem attack preclude from the start anything but a superior 
 attitude of teaching: 
 
 Horace, what greater punishment. 
 
 Cou'd I inflict, my boy, on thee? 
 
 And tell me what wou'd grieve thee more, 
 
 Than thus to lose thy liberty? 
 
 Yet thou can'st take a savage joy, 
 To view thy captive's fond desires; 
 Thou can'st with unrelenting heart, 
 Behold him beat against his wires. 
 
 The boy is plainly lectured in place of being led to feel a 
 community of interest. 
 
 In The Domestic Loss; or the Death of a Dog there is 
 profuse sentimental weeping which is itself, however, some- 
 what out of keeping with the bald moralizing and philo- 
 sophizing that are stretched out to the length of twenty-five 
 stanzas. The distinction between child reason and animal 
 instinct makes the child talk priggishly in a self-congratu- 
 latory vein that recalls Watts. 
 
 If led by instinct's voice alone, 
 That instinct gratitude could teach : 
 Then blessed with reason to reflect. 
 To what perfection should I reach? 
 
 How thankful should my heart o'erflow, 
 For mercies that adorn the mind, 
 For thought, imagination, speech, 
 The privilege of human kind? 
 
 The difiference between Watts in 1720 and these poems in 
 1789 is that the subject matter has in the meantime become 
 secularized. The approach to the child mind is exactly that 
 of the first quarter of the century. The Negro Beggar is 
 
258 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 likewise written purely to start a young meditation on the 
 humanitarian theme. 
 
 What is pity? she asked (as she wiped from her face 
 The tear which bestowed an additional grace). 
 
 Other poems like On a Young Gentleman being Desir- 
 ous of a Goldfinch, The Drozmied Flies, Young Philemon 
 Accused by his Sister of Cruelty, and Verses Occasioned 
 by a Young Gentleman's Hiding his Sister's Squirrel, are 
 conceived in the spirit of Maria Edgeworth and Mrs. Sher- 
 wood, who used the most trivial domestic incidents to point 
 an obvious moral. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld's Hymns in Prose for Children (1781) 
 aimed to "impress devotional feelings as early as possible 
 on the infant mind ... by connecting religion with a 
 variety of sensible objects, with all that he sees, all he 
 hears ... to lay the best foundation for practical devo- 
 tion in future life." Although Mrs. Barbauld was influ- 
 enced by the scientific awakening — and therefore ought to 
 belong to those who teach through direct observation — the 
 Preface indicates the conservative source of her inspiration. 
 Among the many ''rational" books for children, she finds 
 none really suitable "except indeed Dr. Watts's Hymns for 
 Children," and "These are in pretty general use." Her 
 hymns are intended to be committed to memory and re- 
 cited, so that her pupils are in reality not facing "sensible 
 objects" but are still dependent on book learning. 
 
 The ingenuity exercised by these writers, including 
 Maria Edgeworth, in crowding miscellaneous facts into the 
 child mind, while at the same time injecting moral and re- 
 ligious instruction, is seen in the omnium gatherum that 
 makes up Hymn VHI. In the opening paragraph the cot- 
 tage motive together with the return at eve serves the pur- 
 pose of inculcating thrift, industry, and affection for parents. 
 
children's books 259 
 
 "See where stands the cottage of the labourer covered with 
 warm thatch. The mother is spinning at the door; the 
 young children sport before her on the grass; the elder 
 ones learn to labour, and be obedient ; the father worketh to 
 provide them food : either he tilleth the ground, or he gath- 
 ereth in the corn, or shaketh his ripe apples from the trees. 
 His children run to meet him when he cometh home, and 
 his wife prepareth the wholesome meal." Without warning 
 the child finds himself in an exposition of what constitutes a 
 family. Next he is instructed in what constitutes a vil- 
 lage, with the closing sentence : "This is a village ; see where 
 it stands enclosed in green shade, and the tall spire peeps 
 above the trees." Then follows a lesson in geography 
 which carries the child from pole to pole. The tropics 
 suggest the negro mother and her child "pining in captivity." 
 In the concluding rhythms, the Monarch, who rules many 
 states (a "hundred states"), is adjured to remember that 
 he is responsible to God. 
 
 One phase of her method is well illustrated in Hymn IX, 
 where she interests the child in those grains of sand in each 
 of which the naturalistic Blake saw a world. She notes 
 flowers growing "in the hard stone" of the wall, an obser- 
 vation made in a far different mood from that of Tenny- 
 son, who connects the riddle of the universe with the flower 
 in the crannied wall. Her devotional aims do not succeed 
 in crowding out the universal passion for fact cramming, 
 which came with the new enthusiasm for a novel world of 
 scientific facts, and which must have persisted to the time of 
 Dickens, who satirizes the methods of Gradgrind in Hard 
 Times. The encyclopedic nature of moral tales and juve- 
 nile publications is well illustrated in Mrs. Barbauld's prose 
 poetry. The child who can absorb the jumble of botanical, 
 zo-ological, astronomical, geographical, and other observa- 
 tions, is indeed an infant polyhistor. 
 
260 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 It is small wonder that Wordsworth condemned fact 
 cramming, and that Charles Lamb spoke contemptuously of 
 this sort of thing as ''stuff" which had crowded from the 
 shelves of booksellers the fairy tales of Newberry. Words- 
 worth deplored the lack of imagination in such publica- 
 tions, and with justice, as the following passage indicates: 
 ''Many towns, and a large extent of country, make a king- 
 dom ; it is enclosed by mountains ; it is divided by rivers ; it 
 is washed by seas ; the inhabitants thereof are countrymen ; 
 they speak the same language ; they make war and peace to- 
 gether; a king is the ruler thereof. Many kingdoms and 
 countries full of people, and islands, and large continents, 
 and different climates make up this whole world — God 
 governeth it.'' If Wordsworth heard a small child recite 
 this from memory, he might well be moved to reproach 
 writers of the type, who, however good their intentions, did 
 not reverence child nature. 
 
 That these writers were not interested in the child in the 
 same sense as Rousseau, is suggested by the fact that Mrs. 
 Trimmer and Mrs. Sherwood were the last to bear witness 
 in England against fairies. The bold and obvious 
 didacticism of later moral tales became even less attractive 
 when for the influence of Madame Genlis and Madame d' 
 Epinay were substituted the dissection and analysis to which 
 the child's mind and soul were subjected in dialogues writ- 
 ten for him under the influence of Campe and Salzmann in 
 the nineties. Mary Wollstonecraft found in Salzmann's 
 Elements of Morality the true method of forming the heart 
 and character of the child. In this spirit the minutest and 
 most insignificant incidents of family life were moralized, 
 with the inevitable moral that prosperity results from order 
 and propriety, and punishment and unhappiness from their 
 opposites. More attractive than the others is the Calendar 
 
children's books 261 
 
 of Nature by John Aikin, in the spontaneous bits of illus- 
 trative verse; but the fundamental attitude is the same. 
 These writers were essentially on the same basis as Isaac 
 Watts. At all events they reveal no ability to understand 
 and apply the fundamentals of Rousseau as revealed in the 
 advice given to the tutor of Madame d'Epinay's son : ''a 
 child's character should not be changed ; besides, one could 
 not do it if one would, and the greatest success you could 
 achieve would be to make a hypocrite of him. . . . No, sir, 
 you must make the best of the character nature gave him; 
 that is all that is required of you." ^ 
 
 Except for Blake's lyrics, which were not widely known, 
 the situation at the close of the century is such as to justify 
 not only the protests of Lamb but also the severe condem- 
 nation of Wordsworth. The writers of moral tales were 
 not true followers of Rousseau. They had all the passion 
 for teaching and making the child over which Rousseau 
 had condemned. They were influenced by him only in 
 externals, and were as didactic as Watts and the classical 
 masters. It remained for William Blake, who was influ- 
 enced by advanced ideas in philosophy, politics, and theo- 
 logy, to give voice to the philosophy of natural goodness 
 and universal benevolence in the simple accents of child- 
 hood itself. In his lyrics, children themselves for the first 
 time in the century take up the motives developed by poets 
 during the preceding decades, and speak in their own lan- 
 guage, bringing home in their childish accents the pleas for 
 universal benevolence and the protests against restraint. 
 
 1 Quoted in Jean Jacques Rousseau by Jules Lemaitre, trans- 
 lated by Jeanne Mairet, p. 218. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 WIIvUAM BLAKE 
 
 The high estimation in which the early poems of Blake 
 are held seems all the more deserved when it is realized that 
 he wrote his delightful lyrics about children in the very 
 years when moral tales in prose and verse were at the 
 height of their popularity. Blake's lyrics have a primeval 
 freshness that has attracted readers who are not aware 
 of the larger body of literature written during the eighteenth 
 century for and about children. As a result, his poems 
 about children have been singled out as unusual phenomena 
 in the days before Wordsworth. To look upon Blake, 
 however, as an odd genius, who may have been influenced 
 by Elizabethan poetry and Swedenborg and Boehme, but 
 who nevertheless is an isolated phenomenon among the 
 poets of his generation, is to take a line of thought that 
 leads to misunderstanding of the poetry he wrote before 
 the tantalizing prophetic books. It is only by frankly 
 treating him as a poet who was vitally influenced by the 
 thought of his century that his debt to his predecessors in 
 poetry, and his original contribution, can be adequately 
 measured. If treated in its historical setting, his poetry on 
 childhood naturally takes its place among the poetry about 
 children in the eighteenth century. His verse clearly re- 
 veals the influences which had been at work among poets 
 of the century. 
 
 Although valuable records that would throw light on 
 the period before the appearance of the prophetic books 
 have been destroyed, so that it is impossible to reconstruct 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 263 
 
 the earlier period with the same accuracy as the later ones, 
 critics unanimously recognize in the earlier publications like 
 the Poetical Sketches, Blake's indebtedness to predecessors 
 of the "olden age." In place, therefore, of looking only 
 to the later prophetic books to explain his Songs of Inno- 
 cence and Songs of Experience, which are the only poems 
 of Blake that are widely read, it will be more fruitful to 
 study them also in relation to the influences which had 
 worked upon Blake to produce the poems of the earlier 
 period. Before he reached the state of mind revealed in 
 the prophetic books, Blake had read widely in English 
 literature, and his lyrics about children, begun as early as 
 1784,^ disclose his debt to tradition as fully as the poems in 
 Poetical Sketches (1783). 
 
 In the Introductimi to the Songs of Innocence he char- 
 acteristically tells how he was divinely guided by a child 
 sitting on a cloud, who laughingly directed him to pipe 
 songs of happy cheer and to write them in a book that all 
 may read. He obeyed the call of the child : 
 
 And I wrote my happy songs 
 Every child may joy to hear. 
 
 The little book, the poems set in colored engravings made 
 and tinted by himself, represents his contribution to the 
 long list of books published for children after the middle of 
 the century. The format was in keeping with juvenile 
 publications of the time, but his engravings added a novel 
 
 1 Compare Songs from an Island in the Moon (MS. circa 
 1784) : 
 
 XII O, I say, you, Joe, 
 Throw us the ball. 
 
 (Footnote in the Oxford Edition: "Sung by Tilly Lally, a school- 
 boy.") 
 
264 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 feature. It has been observed in the preceding pages how 
 poetry for children was increasingly published from the 
 days of Watts's Divine Songs for Children until, from the 
 time of Newberry's innovations, publishers specialized in 
 juvenile literature. Blake was himself in touch with this 
 trade. In 1793 he published For Children: The Gates of 
 Paradise. Mr. John Sampson says of this publication : 
 ''In its original form (as pubhshed in 1793) The Gates of 
 Paradise was a simple picture-book 'For Children,' con- 
 sisting of a frontispiece, title-page, and sixteen engraved 
 plates of emblematic designs, the original pencil sketches 
 for which are found in the Rossetti MS." ^ In 1790 he 
 adapted forty-nine engravings for Mary Wollstonecraft's 
 translation of Salzmann's Elementamhuch; and the follow- 
 ing year he engraved six plates for her Original Stories for 
 Children (1791).- His intimate friend Godwin was in- 
 terested in juvenile Hterature, and later set up as a publisher 
 of children's books, the Tales from Shakespeare by Charles 
 and Mary Lamb issuing from his press. It would, there- 
 fore, be no novelty or innovation to publish the Songs of 
 Innocence for children.^ To be publishing for children 
 
 1 The Poetical Works of William Blake, Oxford University 
 Press, 1914, p. 413. 
 
 2 Compare also "two very sweet designs" for Hayley's "Little 
 Tom the Sailor," a series of illustrations for Hayley's "Ballads on 
 Animals," and the charming frontispiece for T. Malkin's A Father's 
 Memoirs of his Child. 
 
 3 Compare Songs of Experience: A Little Girl Lost — 
 
 Children of the future age, 
 
 Reading this indignant page, 
 
 Know that in a former time. 
 
 Love, szveet Love, was thought a crime! 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 265 
 
 was to be, in fact, working in the spirit of his most inti- 
 mate friends.^ 
 
 Blake justly prided himself on the delight of children 
 of his acquaintance in the tinted engravings of his diminu- 
 tive book. The picture which he made a part of each en- 
 graving (in itself not larger than five by three inches) 
 illustrates and complements the text so as to make each 
 page a delight to the eye. In The Little Black Boy, the 
 mother is sitting under a tree with the child leaning against 
 her. In The Lamb the child is standing just beyond a brook; 
 between the child and the barn in the background are sheep ; 
 and a lamb is looking into the face of the child, whose arms 
 are stretched out as if to receive it into his bosom. ''I am 
 happy to find a great majority of fellow-mortals who can 
 elucidate my visions, and particularly they have been eluci- 
 dated by children, who have taken a greater delight in con- 
 templating my pictures than I even hoped." ^ Blake was 
 not the first to illustrate juvenile publications, but his deli- 
 cately tinted engravings are more attractive than the justly 
 admired oval woodcuts of Bewick. 
 
 It is not necessary to read a deep symbolical meaning 
 into the vision Which prompted him to write his songs for 
 children. Blake's biographers have noted how, as an imagi- 
 native child, he had seen a vision at the age of four and 
 again at the age of ten; and how to the end of his life he 
 
 1 "So the pen that had once tried to carve, as on a rock, the 
 story of Samson, and 'the words of truth, that all who pass may 
 read,' was now to become a delicate reed, and write simple sen- 
 tences for any child to spell out." — William Blake, Poet and Mystic, 
 by P. Berger, translated by Daniel H. Conner. Chapman and Hall, 
 London, 1914, page 286. 
 
 2 Letter of Blake to the Rev. Dr. Trusler, August 23, 1799, in 
 Letters of Blake, edited by G. B. Russell, Methuen, London, page 63. 
 
266 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 disturbed his friends by insisting that he saw visions in 
 their presence. There need be nothing mysterious or mysti- 
 fying in this. He used to say to his friends, "You can see 
 what I do if you choose. Work up imagination to the 
 state of vision, and the thing is done." In connection with 
 his vision of a fold of lambs in a meadow, it is interesting 
 to note "the reply which Blake gave to a lady who asked 
 him inhere he had descried this sight. ''Here, madam,' he 
 replied, touching his forehead : an answer which serves to 
 caution us against supposing that he either accepted as 
 literal facts for himself, or wished to convey literally to 
 others, some of the visionary or supersensuous incidents 
 of which he made frequent mention." ^ If the reader will 
 come to Blake's lyrics without preoccupations, there need 
 be no difficulties in view of his historical position and the 
 facts of his life. 
 
 Blake is not the first among poets to use simple lan- 
 guage in verses intended for children. From Bishop Ken 
 and Watts, through the time of Newberry, to writers of 
 moral tales, there were poets and prose writers who had at 
 least endeavored to write in language adapted to the com- 
 prehension of children, without having in any instance 
 achieved the verisimilitude of the lisping syllables of 
 Blake's The Little Black Boy. Like Burns, he gains force 
 through ballad simplicity; like Burns, too, Blake is often 
 homely in his phrasing, it being not uncommon to find collo- 
 quial and even ungrammatical expressions.^ Blake's in- 
 debtedness to ballads and hymn-writers is obvious. Where, 
 however, other writers, including Cowper, were satisfied to 
 write from a restricted sectarian point of view, Blake broke 
 
 1 Quoted in Prefatory Memoir by W. M. Rossetti (Aldine 
 Blake). 
 
 2 p Berger, op. cit. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 267 
 
 away from t^e limits of creed, and did not retain the views 
 and subject-matter that stamped one poem as Unitarian, 
 another as Church of England, and still another as Metho- 
 dist. V'ariant readings preserved in connecticm with Holy 
 Thursday ^ indicate that he was not even tempted to phrase 
 a narrow view in place of a broadly human conception. 
 Watts thought he had broken with sectarian prejudice in 
 his songs for children, but it remained for Blake actually 
 to shake off traditional fetters and to look upon the child 
 with the eyes of a naturalistic philosopher, as in his Divine 
 Image (Songs of Innocence), in which man is conceived as 
 the outline of God, so that as every man discovers a real 
 man, he discovers God.- 
 
 For Mercy has a human heart, 
 Pity a human face, 
 
 And Love, the human form divine. 
 And Peace, the human dress. 
 
 How far he is from the insularity of Watts and the bonds of 
 creed, is clear in the inclusive closing stanza, which gives 
 tender lyric expression to the doctrine of universal benevo- 
 lence : 
 
 And all must love the human form, 
 In heathen, Turk, or Jew; 
 Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell 
 There God is dwelling too. 
 
 1 Songs of Innocence. 
 
 2 Gardner, Vision and Vesture, p. 6o.— Compare also Auguries 
 of Innocence: 
 
 God appears, and God is Light. 
 
 To those poor souls who dwell in Night; 
 
 But does a Human Form display 
 
 To those who dwell in realms of Day. 
 
268 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Blake represents the culmination of those phases of the 
 movement that tended to emphasize childhood in connection 
 with the insistence on universal benevolence and freedom 
 from institutional restraint. Blake has taken up the mo- 
 tives of the childhood theme, and by passing them through 
 the fiery alembic of his genius has given them the finality 
 of phrasing that, ordinarily, only a master poet can achieve. 
 But before a master poet may write, there must be a period 
 of preparation. If the reader who wishes to find childhood 
 in the poetry of the eighteenth century turns only to Blake, 
 it will seem as though Blake had indeed conceived wholly in 
 a spirit of originahty, when as a matter of fact he is but the 
 natural outcome of forces at work for three quarters of a 
 century. In the following paragraphs it is the purpose 
 to indicate how Blake grew out of the eighteenth century 
 in his attitude tov/ard childhood and how he enriched 
 established motives and gave them true lyrical expression. 
 
 In Songs of Innocence (1789) he gives his vision of 
 children who are in a perfect state of happiness : in Songs of 
 Experience (1794) dind Auguries of Innocence (1801-1803), 
 and also in certain lyrics in the Pickering Manuscript, he 
 protests against conditions that warp life from its true in- 
 tent. Before 1790 Blake still wrote with the heart of a 
 child. In Songs of htnocence the child is altogether happy 
 because he is in spontaneous harmony with nature. In 
 Songs of Experience and Auguries of Innocence, Blake 
 recognizes disturbing elements in the realm of nature in 
 so far as they affect the child. Like benevolist poets, he 
 did not attempt a consistent application of natural goodness 
 and universal benevolence, but recognized the intervention 
 of facts. Like his predecessors and contemporaries, he pro- 
 tested vehemently against conditions and practices which 
 he held responsible for unhappiness and suffering. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 269 
 
 With the protest against school restraints put upon the 
 child, Blake merges a tender regret which in the mood of 
 the universal benevolists he brings home to the reader in 
 an image from bird life. With a simplicity that mocks 
 analysis, he subtly identifies bird and child. Burns alone 
 among those wfho after Thomson pleaded for animals, ap- 
 proaches the tenderness and natural magic of Blake. In 
 The Schoolboy (Songs of Experience), the child loves to 
 rise on a summer morn when birds are singing on every 
 tree ; but to go to school and to sit ''under a cruel eye out- 
 worn" drives all joy away. 
 
 How can the bird that is born for joy 
 
 Sit in a cage and sing? 
 
 How can a child, when fears annoy, 
 
 But droop his tender wing. 
 
 And forget his youthful spring? 
 
 The difference between Songs of Innocence and Songs 
 of Experience is indicated in the engraved frontispieces 
 executed by Blake. In that for the first series, young chil- 
 dren are standing at their mother's knee; in that for the 
 second, the children are older, and are bent in grief over 
 the bier of their dead parents. That his conception of a 
 happy universe peopled by happy children does not square 
 with the facts of daily observation, he holds to be due to 
 the distortion of nature by man. Had man been content 
 to live in the golden age of innocence, his childlike delight 
 in God and creation would not have been perverted, and the 
 Songs of Experience would not have been necessary. In 
 The Schoolboy, the Child who sits joyless in school, 'Worn 
 thro' with the dreary shower," appeals to its parents for 
 freedom to live naturally : 
 
270 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 O ! father and mother, if buds are nipped 
 And blossoms blown away, 
 And if the tender plants are stripped 
 Of their joy in the springing day, 
 By sorrow and care's dismay, 
 
 How shall the summer arise in joy, 
 
 Or the summer fruits appear? 
 
 Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy. 
 
 Or bless the mellowing year, 
 
 When blasts of winter appear? 
 
 In Holy Thursday he notes the humanitarian motive in 
 relation to children of the poor. Is it a holy thing to see 
 in such a rich and fruitful land as England 
 
 Babes reduced to misery, 
 
 Fed with cold and usurous hand? 
 
 Had man not interfered — ^perhaps he was thinking of fields 
 and sky blackened with industrial smoke — children might 
 still be living, as he had pictured them in Songs of Inno- 
 cence, in a happy state of nature. 
 
 For wihere'er the sun does shine, 
 And where'er the rain does fall, 
 Babe can never hunger there, 
 Nor poverty the mind appal. 
 
 In London he again protests against man-made restric- 
 tions that bind the child : 
 
 In every Infant's cry of fear, 
 In every voice, in every ban. 
 The mind-forged manacles I hear. 
 
 In his Revolutionary fervor, Blake has extended Pope's 
 objections to school discipline to include restrictions of all 
 kinds. As in Rousseau, the child should be free as nature 
 made him : man must not interfere. Blake has gone far 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 271 
 
 beyond Pope and West in advocating the emancipation of 
 childhood. The advanced position of Blake is appreciated 
 when his fiery protests are compared with the conservative 
 suggestions of Cowper's Tirocinium, in which the child is 
 brought nearer to nature by removal from the school to the 
 home. The accents of Rousseau are unmistakable only 
 once in the poetry of the eighteenth century. Blake alone 
 in poetry ventured as far as the French philosopher. At 
 times he ventured farther. ^ 
 
 The humanitarian motive noticed by Headley and 
 Jerningham is fiercely transmuted by unflinching direct- 
 ness of phrasing, which, except for the lyric fire, is sug- 
 gestive of Crabbe : 
 
 But most thro' midnight streets I hear 
 
 How the youthful harlot's curse 
 
 Blasts the new-born infant's tear, 
 
 And blights with plagues the marriage hearse. 2 
 
 The war motive is merged with the protest against 
 luxury in the ''hapless soldier's sig'h" which "Runs in blood 
 down palace walls." The helpless little chimney-sweeper 
 cries out against spiritual neglect, which Blake shadows 
 forth in the image, ''every black'ning church." In fact, 
 London is a summation of most of the themes of protest 
 that are found in benevolist poetry. The opening stanza 
 gives Blake's version of the romantic antipathy toward city 
 life. In the city, all is restraint and repression, and man 
 as a result bears the marks of woe. 
 
 1 Gnomic Verses: 
 
 The Angel that presided o'er my birth 
 
 Said 'Little creature, framed of joy and mirth, 
 
 Go, love without the help of anything on earth.' 
 
 2 Compare the MS. variant : "From every dismal street I hear," 
 This is nearer Crabbe. 
 
272 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 I wander thro' each chartered street, 
 
 Near where the chartered Thames does flow. 
 
 And mark in every face I meet 
 
 Marks of weakness, marks of woe. 
 
 The Chimney-Sweeper is important because it reflects 
 the benevolist doctrine that man is made for happiness 
 in this world and that his happiness should therefore not 
 be postponed to a future state. Blake's attitude of antagon- 
 ism toward the church as one of the institutions that hinder 
 rather than help the child to happiness is clearly revealed 
 by the child itself. The humanitarian protest is no longer 
 delivered by the poet, but instead he has one of those chil- 
 dren who suffer most from social injustice voice the cry 
 against neglect of children's welfare: 
 
 A little black thing among the snow, 
 Crying 'weep ! 'weep ! in notes of woe ! 
 'Where are thy father and mother, say?' — 
 They are both gone up to the Church to pray. 
 
 'Because I was happy upon the heath, 
 And smiled among the winter's snow, 
 They clothed me in the clothes of death, 
 And taught me to sing the notes of woe. 
 
 'And because I am happy and dance and sing. 
 They think they have done me no injury. 
 And are gone to praise God and His Priest and King, 
 Who make up a Heaven of our misery.' 
 
 These lines show that Blake was in touch with the most 
 advanced opinion of his generation. They reflect the 
 opinions voiced in the Revolutionary circles of Godwin 
 and Paine. At the dinners given by the publisher Johnson, 
 Blake met Mary Wollstonecraft, Priestley, Godwin, Holcroft, 
 and Paine ; and he seems to have been the only one of the 
 group who dared to expose to the public gaze his extreme 
 views on politics, for he actually wore the honnet-rouge 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 273 
 
 on the street. It was Blake w*lio later gave Paine the time- 
 ly warning which saved his friend from arrest. Blake was 
 himself tried for treason at Chichester upon the accusation 
 of a soldier whom Blake believed to the end of his life to 
 be an agent of the government. To take Blake out of his 
 century, and to treat him as an isolated dreamer, is, there- 
 fore, to misunderstand him. Blake was a ''daring specula- 
 tor in religion and morals ... he was and always con- 
 tinued a republican, and an enemy of kings and war." ^ He 
 scorned priestcraft with the intensity of Shelley. In The 
 Garden of Love the child returns to the green on which he 
 had played, and there he finds a chapel he had never ob- 
 served before. Over the door was written ''Thou shalt not." 
 And when he turned to the garden of love that had always 
 blossomed with flowers, he could see nothing but tomb- 
 stones, 
 
 And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, 
 And binding with briars my joys and desires. 
 
 It was contrary to Blake's nature to have the child's natural 
 desires fettered and bound. - 
 
 1 William Rossetti, Prefatory Memoir, Aldine Blake (i8qo). 
 
 2 Compare Poems from the Rossetti MS: Why should I care 
 for the men of Thames: 
 
 Tho' born on the cheating banks of Thames, 
 Tho' his waters bathed my infant limbs, 
 The Ohio shall wash his stains from me : 
 I was born a slave, but I go to be free ! 
 
 Compare also Langhorne's The Enlargement of the Mind (1763) : 
 Is Nature, all benevolent, to blame 
 That half her offspring are their mother's shame? 
 Did she ordain o'er this fair scene of things 
 The cruelty of priests and kings? 
 
 Though worlds lie murdered for their wealth or fame, 
 Is Nature, all benevolent, to blame? 
 
274 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 In A Little Boy Lost he pictures a martyrdom by fire. 
 A priest overhears the child giving expression to a natural- 
 istic sentiment. The child is voicing the thought that it 
 is not possible for an individual to know a greater than 
 himself. 
 
 'And, Father, how can I love you 
 
 Or any of my brothers more ? 
 
 I love you like the little bird 
 
 That picks up crumbs around the door.' 
 
 The priest (who in Blake's naturalistic conception represents 
 institutional life and restraint from without) was horrified, 
 and, while the multitude "admired the priestly care," "led 
 him by his little coat" to the altar : 
 
 *Lo ! what a fiend is here,' said he, 
 'One who sets reason up for judge 
 Of our mos/t holy Mystery.' 
 
 In place of proceeding by way of the cold reasonings of 
 his friend Godwin, Blake visualizes the situation in terms of 
 childhood. 
 
 The weeping child could not be heard, 
 The weeping parents wept in vain ; 
 Tihey stripped him to his little shirt. 
 And bound him in an iron chain; 
 
 And burned him in a holy place, 
 Where many had been burned before : 
 The weeping parents wept in vain. 
 
 Blake's fiery spirit of revolt leads him to break in with the 
 question, 
 
 Are such things done on Albion's shore? 
 
 Although! Blake frankly notices effects of the cleavage 
 which has resulted in nature from man's interference, he is 
 not led to disillusionment in the Songs of Experience. He 
 states the cause of man's unhappiness, but also suggests the 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 275 
 
 remedy. Nature and God are not at fault. In The Little 
 Vagabond, the spiritual neglect of the church is arraigned 
 in the simple accents of a child who naively observes the 
 difference between the bleak ctiurch and the warm and 
 inviting alehouse. 
 
 Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold, 
 
 But the Ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm; 
 
 Besides I can tell where I am used well. 
 
 The church had long been out of touch with the masses ; 
 by the middle of the century the protests against the tradi- 
 tional curriculum in the established schools included among 
 the necessary reforms, that of closer touch between priest 
 and congregation in intelligible sermons. Boswell notes 
 t!hat if the masses are to be reached, it will be necessary 
 for the church to adopt some of the enthusiasm of the dis- 
 senters. The child in Blake's poem has noticed that parsons 
 do not regale people's souls with attractive fare and a 
 ''pleasant fire." Yet if the church were properly admin- 
 istered, all men would be as happy as birds in spring, 
 
 And God, like a father, rejoicing to see 
 
 His children as pleasant and happy as He, 
 
 Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel. 
 
 Blake's remedy is that man should again return to 
 nature ; all nature is given him if he will but open his heart. 
 In Earth's Answer, Earth, who hears the poet, is "covered 
 with gray despair" : man has chained himself with jealousies 
 and fears and selfishness ; he is bound by his senses and 
 conventions. Earth calls in despair : 
 
 'Break this heavy chain 
 
 That does freeze my bones around. 
 
 Selfish ! vain ! 
 
 Eternal bane ! 
 
 That free love with bondage bound.' 
 
276 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Blake's "free love" is the spirit of love that permeates 
 poetry from Thomson to Wordsworth. But in his protest 
 against restraining forces, he was probably also thinking 
 more specifically of the Godwinian attitude toward the mar- 
 riage bond. ^ The influence of Godwin and Revolutionary 
 doctrines did not in this respect go farther than theory with 
 Blake, for his married life was not marred by acts unbe- 
 coming a husband. In this connection it is interesting to 
 note that he has referred in London to the "marriage 
 hearse." ^ 
 
 The dynamic force and vivid imagery of Songs of Ex- 
 perience reveal Blake's violent energy; and he has pushed 
 familiar eighteenth-century doctrines to daring extremes. 
 But these qualities of superior genius should not bHnd the 
 reader to the identity of his motives with those of his pre- 
 decessors. 
 
 In the concentrated force of his epigrammatic protest in 
 Auguries of Innocence against restraint and the popular 
 desire to make the child over into something which he is 
 not by nature, he is more nearly than his contemporaries a 
 
 1 "In some of the earlier 3^ears of the marriage, indeed, it is 
 said that grave conflicts of feeling and of will arose between Blake 
 and his wife — jealousy on her part being the essential cause, or 
 rather something on his part which occasioned her jealousy. This 
 will surprise no one who is cognizant of the full range of Blake's 
 writings, and who consequently knows, that his views of the 
 sexual relation and of the marriage-tie . . . were of the most 
 audacious possible kind." — William Rossetti, Prefatory Memoir, 
 Aldine Blake (1890), p. xxii. 
 
 2 Cp. Gnomic Verses. 
 
 Remove away that black'ning church, 
 Remove away that marriage hearse. 
 Remove away that man of blood — 
 You'll quite remove the ancient curse. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 277 
 
 true son of Rousseau and the Revolution. His vehement 
 denunciations of priestcraft and dogmas that, he held, do 
 violence to child nature, often recall his association with 
 the Godwinian circle, and suggest also the fury of the free- 
 dom-loving Shelley. All other poets who wrote on childhood 
 in England before and during the time of Blake, failed to 
 understand or at least to apply Rousseau's dictum that 
 with the child one should not gain time but lose it, by which 
 is meant the policy of non-interference with natural de- 
 velopment of children. He demands freedom for the child 
 during the years of his development. Because Blake hated 
 system as something unnatural, he would not be in sympathy 
 with a system of education like that of Madame Genlis or 
 Sarah Trimmer. Teaching of all kinds, by which he means 
 interference from without by adults, is condemned. He is 
 one with Rousseau in recognizing that the adult has his 
 place, but he insists that the child has his inviolable place 
 also: 
 
 He who respects the infant's faith 
 Triumphs over Hell and Death. 
 The child's toys and the old man's reasons 
 Are the fruits of the two seasons. 
 
 The emmet's inch and the eagle's mile put all philosophy of 
 grown-ups to shame. He who teaches the child sophisti- 
 cated lore "the rotting grave will ne'er get out" ; and 
 
 The babe that weeps the rod beneath 
 Writes revenge in realms of death, 
 
 for man must recognize that children have a spiritual na- 
 ture, and that the child, therefore, is "more than swaddling- 
 bands." Because of man's interference, children are born 
 only "to night," which is Blake's way of saying that they 
 are system-bound and lacking in spiritual insight. If man 
 
278 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 would not interpose his schemes, children would be born 
 only to happiness/ 
 
 He senses eternity in the soul life of the child just as 
 clearly as he sees a world in a grain of sand — all nature is 
 linked, and every iBanifestation of nature demands the 
 reverence of man in its own kind. In this respect Blake 
 had a keen vision that was not vouchsafed to writers of 
 moral tales, who were not willing to take the child for 
 what God had made him. Them and all their tribe he con- 
 demns outright as unable to comprehend child nature ; their 
 efforts are — and here again he is in harmony with Shaftes- 
 bury and Rousseau — a mockery of God's creation : 
 
 He who mocks the infant's faith 
 Shall be mocked in Age and Death. 
 
 In Auguries of Innocence, Blake has interwoven with 
 the traditional protest against restraint a true understand- 
 ing and respect for the faculties of children. In so far as 
 he has advanced from negative protest to a positive vision, 
 he is one of those who, beginning with the liberalizing 
 Shaftesbury, lead to Herbart in pedagogy and Stevenson 
 and Field in poetry. They left far behind them the traditional 
 didactic spirit and looked upon the child with a feeling 
 heart and clear understanding that were, as in Blake, in- 
 spired by respect and reverence for child nature. 
 
 In Auguries of Innocence Blake delivers his message 
 in the mood of the benevolists. References to animal life 
 clarify and enforce the thought of almost every epigram. 
 The Thomsonian plea for freedom is condensed by Blake 
 into the awe-inspiring lines: 
 
 1 Every morn and every night 
 Some are born to sweet delight. 
 Some are born to sweet delight, 
 Some are born to endless night 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 279 
 
 A robin redbreast in a cage 
 
 Puts all heaven in a rage. 
 
 A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons 
 
 Shudders Hell thro' all its regions. ^ 
 
 Humanitarian and charitable motives are treated through- 
 out in the same mood, and always with a terrible intensity 
 and "double vision." 
 
 Each outcry of the hunted hare 
 A fibre from the brain does tear. 
 A skylark wounded in the wing, 
 A cherubim does cease to sing. 
 
 * 
 
 The bat that flits at close of eve 
 Has left the brain that won't believe. 
 The owl that calls upon the night 
 Speaks the unbeliever's fright. 
 He who shall hurt the little wren 
 Shall never be beloved by men. 
 
 The wanton boy that kills the fly 
 Shall feel the spider's enmity. 
 He who torments the chafer's sprite 
 Weaves a bower in endless night. 
 The caterpillar on the leaf 
 Repeats to thee thy mother's grief. 
 
 The inability of writers of moral tales to take the child 
 frankly as a child, and to reverence him without interposing 
 conceptions foreign to child nature, is illustrated in Poems 
 on Various Subjects for the Amusement of Youth, the 
 second edition of which was published in the same year 
 as Songs of Innocence. The volume is pervaded by the 
 conventional humanitarianism of the age. The poems lack 
 the spirit of Blake's lyrics because they were written at 
 
 1 Cp. Thomson's lines on confined and caged birds in Spring. 
 
280 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 children in a spirit of bald didacticism. ^ Children are 
 plainly lectured instead of being led to feel the situation. 
 Blake, on the other hand, in place of acknowledging a line 
 of demarcation between the child and the natural phenome- 
 na of animal life, identifies the child spirit with that of the 
 animal by a perception of the underlying unity that binds 
 all creation. The child and animal are equally conceived 
 with an objectivity that for^bids the recognition of a line of 
 cleavage between created beings. 
 
 Blake accepts this mystic unity as a fact, and does not 
 interpose deductions and implications that, because they are 
 the result of mature thought based on reading and exper- 
 ience, can not be in harmony with the child's thoughts on 
 the subject. The pot-boilers of Charles and Mary Lamb 
 (however delightful as compared with the moral tales and 
 their congeners) and the poems of Ann and Jane Taylor 
 fail in the authors' inability to enter truly into the child 
 spirit. The poetry of the Taylors, delicate as the verse 
 often is, as in The Violet, and Thank You, Pretty Cow, and 
 attractive as in Tzmnkle. tzmnkle little star, nevertheless 
 suffers because they do not interpret the impressions of a 
 
 1 Nathaniel Cotton turned to childhood in Happiness: 
 Go to the schoolboy, he shall preach 
 What twenty winters cannot teach. 
 
 His didactic purpose is clear in Slander: 
 
 Childhood and youth engage my pen, 
 Tis labor lost to talk to men. 
 
 In his winning lines To Some Children Listening to a Lark ("See 
 the lark prunes his active wings"), he asks, 
 
 Shall birds instructive lessons teach, 
 And we be deaf to what they preach ? 
 
 No ; ye dear nestlings of my heart ! 
 Go act the wiser songster's part. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 281 
 
 child in terms of child thought and comprehension. *'So 
 far were they ruled by the customary requirement of their 
 time, that they falsely endowed the juvenile mind with the 
 power of correlating external beauty with its own virtuous 
 possibilities." ^ Children from whom the sentiments of 
 these poems are supposed to flow, reveal an unnatural 
 power of discrimination that is not childlike. The quick 
 response that Blake's Songs of Innocence still evoke from 
 children, who normally consider all animals and flowers 
 their friends, is, again, due to the poet's ability and willing- 
 ness to take the emotional and thought life of the child for 
 what it is, and to reverence it. Blake becomes again a child, 
 writing as a child would if he had the power of poetic ex- 
 pression. 
 
 This intimate unity of created beings is expressed almost 
 exclusively by merging the animal motive with the child- 
 hood theme. By bringing these two elements together in 
 the development of universal benevolence, Thomson had 
 started the tradition which led not only to Burns's natural 
 magic in developing childhood themes in imagery drawn 
 from bird life, but also to Lovibond's exaltation of the child 
 in Rural Sports. Blake is the recipient of the same in- 
 fluences, and it is only by understanding the attitude of 
 poets during the eighteenth century toward animals that 
 Blake's lyrics can be read in true perspective. Animals 
 are at the very center of his conception of life as expressed 
 in his development of the childhood theme. Lovibond had 
 already definitely held up the child as a model for parents; 
 and Blake's fundamentally naturalistic conception in Songs 
 of Innocence is in hamiony with that part of Christianity 
 which exalts the innocence and purity of the child heart : 
 
 1 Children's Books and Reading, by Montrose J. Moses, New 
 York, 1907. 
 
282 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set 
 him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say 
 unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as 
 little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom 
 of Heaven, 
 
 In Blake's conception, children are in complete harmony 
 with the spirit of benevolence that permeates the universe. 
 Where in Songs of Experience and Auguries of Innocence 
 he protests against man's sense-bound attitude, in the pure 
 conception of Songs of Innocence he depicts childhood as it 
 has never been portrayed again in English literature. 
 Children enjoy the natural, unquestioning happiness of 
 which man might partake if he could live like them in 
 conformity with nature. The ideal state of happiness in 
 which Bllake's children live and move spontaneously, dif- 
 ferentiates his poems from those of other poets. His im- 
 ages embody the dream of the eighteenth century ; his ani- 
 mals and children illustrate the vision of natural goodness 
 and universal benevolence. Blake's children and the ani- 
 mals with which they live in community of feeling and in- 
 terests are not those of this world. On the other hand, 
 Dora Quillinan's pet lamb is an animal of the pastures that 
 every Lancashire peasant knows. Fidelity tells of a hound 
 of terrestrial breed ; and one always thinks of the poem in 
 connection with Sir Walter Scott's Helvellyn. Cowper's 
 hare and Burns's mouse are sentimentalized, but they are 
 nevertheless of the type known from experience. In the 
 eighteenth century there is a whole catalogue of freakish 
 beasts, from Shenstone's playful kid that gamboled on the 
 roof of the garden house, to Lovibond's farm-yard gather- 
 ing, Cowper's Old Tiny, and Wordsworth's kitten toying 
 with the falling leaves : all are conceived in terms of com- 
 mon experience. But Blake's children at play with animals 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 283 
 
 represent an ideal state that would exist if natural goodness 
 and instinctive benevolence were facts. 
 
 If his songs have an Elizabethan freshness, it is because 
 Blake had like the Elizabethans an eager, childlike enthu- 
 siasm that was inspired at the same time by the highest 
 Christian teachings and naturalistic philosophy with regard 
 to the child. If his ballad-like simplicity has greater charm 
 than the halting verse of minor eighteenth-century poets, 
 it means simply that he, like Burns, added lyric power. 
 His lyrics are joyous as the theme he develops, because he 
 sang with an Elizabethan spontaneity in the true spirit of 
 ballad simplicity. The Echoing Green is of the eighteenth 
 century in all but the joyous freshness of the exhilarating 
 lines that sing themselves. The spontaneous quality of the 
 poem must not obscure the fact that the side glance to bird 
 life is not new, and that children sporting on the green 
 have been observed often by poets before Blake. 
 
 The Sun does arise, 
 
 And make happy the skies; 
 
 The merry bells ring 
 
 To welcome the Spring; 
 
 The skylark and thrush, 
 
 The birds of the bush, 
 
 Sing louder around 
 
 To the bells' cheerful sound, 
 
 While our sports shall be seen 
 
 On the Echoing Green. 
 
 The image of old folk sitting in the shade and recalling the 
 days of their youth is not new. 
 
 Old John, with white hair, 
 Does laugh away care, 
 Sitting under the oak, 
 Among the old folk. 
 They laugh at our play. 
 And soon they all say: 
 
284 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Such, such were the joys 
 When we all, girls and boys, 
 In youth time were seen 
 On the Echoing Green." 
 
 The image at the heart of the closing stanza, that of the 
 mother bird and her brood, is not novel. 
 
 Till the little ones, weary. 
 No more can be merry; 
 The sun does descend, 
 And our sports have an end. 
 Round the laps of their mothers 
 Many sisters and brothers, 
 Like birds in their nest, 
 Are ready for rest. 
 And sport no more seen 
 On the darkening Green. 
 
 The unaffected abandon to the child spirit is new. The 
 play of children is that of natural children, and not sicklied 
 over, as in Gray, by thought or sentiment, for Blake identi- 
 fies himself with children and writes as from the heart of a 
 child. 
 
 In The Lamb, he has again written wholly from the 
 point of view of the child who asks the little lamb if it knows 
 its maker. 
 
 Little Lamb, who made thee? 
 Dost thou know who made thee? 
 
 The imagery is simple and convincing because it is con- 
 ceived in the child spirit. lA child's observation would focus 
 on the "Softest clothing, woolly, bright," and on the "tender 
 voice" of the lamb. |In the second stanza the child answers 
 the question with equal simplicity, but with a mystic insight 
 into the unity which makes lamb and child one, an ob- 
 servation that is at the same time profound, and yet char- 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 285 
 
 acterized by just that simple penetrative power, unspoiled 
 by experience, that is associated with childhood. 
 
 Little Lamb, Fll tell thee, 
 Little Lamb, I'll tell thee : 
 He is called by thy name, 
 For He calls Himself a Lamb. 
 He is meek, and He is mild ; 
 He became a little child. 
 I a child, and thou a lamb. 
 We are called by His name. 
 
 Blake does not conceive the child as reasoning out the prob- 
 lem ; that would have led nowhere, and, anyway, would not 
 have been true to child nature. ^ The child feels the unity, 
 and states it like a child as a fact, directly and unquestion- 
 ingly. It is here that Blake breaks with the didactic tra- 
 dition. He does not reason, and he does not teach ; instead 
 he sings eternal mystic truths in the lightsome mood of 
 childhood, before doubt has awakened the mind to make it 
 gloomy. Childhood was sacred in the eyes of Blake be- 
 cause of this power, which is lost in man. 
 
 In Night, the child's thought is wholly absorbed in im- 
 ages from animal life. He is not thought of according to 
 one standard, and birds according to another. He unques- 
 tioningly accepts his life as guarded by the same benevo- 
 lent spirit which protects bird and beast. So delicately 
 is the child attuned to this spirit that in A Dream an 
 
 1 Auguries of Innocence: 
 
 The questioner, who sits so sly, 
 Shall never know how to reply. 
 * 
 
 The emmet's inch and eagle's mile 
 Make lame Philosophy to smile. 
 He who doubts from what he sees 
 Will ne'er believe, do what you please. 
 
286 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 emmet which has lost its way casts a shadow over the 
 *'angel-guarded bed" of a child asleep on the grass. In a 
 dream the child heard the benighted and travel-worn em- 
 met say: 
 
 'O, my children! do they cry? 
 
 Do they hear their father sigh? 
 
 Now they look abroad to see : 
 
 Now return and weep for me.' 
 
 The child pitied the emmet, and ^'dropped a tear." But he 
 was relieved to see a glow-worm, who replied to the emmet, 
 
 'What wailing wight 
 Calls the watchman of the night?' 
 
 This is all delightful. The story has a happy ending, for the 
 glow-worm sets the emmet on the track of the beetle. 
 
 Any child would joy to hear his mother read this drama- 
 tized episode from the night life of famihar insects. The 
 animals act their part with simple dignity and restraint that 
 does not obscure their kindliness of heart. Sensitive na- 
 tures had responded in the eighteenth century to the appeal 
 for a consideration of the rights of animals ; but Blake's 
 vivid imagination carried him beyond their indignant re- 
 proaches and sentimental pleas into a vital dramatization of 
 animal life in terms of the humanitarian spirit that had 
 begun to pervade all classes of English people fifty years 
 before the emmet and glow-worm conversed in the grass 
 near a sleeping child. In the sentiment of the poem, and in 
 the ballad form which harmonizes perfectly with the child 
 spirit, Blake is in the direct line of Romantic development 
 that led to the simple ballad of the naturalistic cottage girl 
 whose inability to comprehend the sophisticated poet's in- 
 sistence on the difference between life and death emphasizes 
 the indestructible unity that underlies all creation. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 287 
 
 There is a touch of whimsicaHty in A Dream which 
 foreshadows definitely, for the first time in the eighteenth 
 century, the attitude of Stevenson and Eugene Field. 
 Children spontaneously rise with true feeling to the con- 
 ception of the emmet who has lost his way in the dark and 
 can not find his children. It is inconceivable that Watts 
 or the ultra-serious Barbauld and Trimmer should have 
 thought in terms of the glow-worm who asks what wailing 
 wight calls the watchman, or still less of the injunction, 
 which suggests the whimsical mood of Wynken, Blynken, 
 and Nod , 
 
 1 am set to light the ground, 
 Wihile the beetle goes his round: 
 Follow now the beetle's hum; 
 Little wanderer, hie thee home.' 
 
 In this poem there is not so much as a suggestion of teach- 
 ing; in fact, the child is not made to feel conscious of him- 
 self at all ; his sentiment is merged with a situation that 
 is perfectly normal to his conception of what may happen 
 in natural life. A new force is felt here in children's 
 poetry. It is the unaffected and untrammeled working of 
 the poet's fancy. Where the imaginative approach would 
 be too strong for the child's comprehension, the fancy of 
 the poet, working in harmony with the child's mind pro- 
 cesses, conceives a situation that appeals immediately be- 
 cause of its delicacy. 
 
 On Another's Sorrozv shows a child who again bears wit- 
 ness to an instinctive universal benevolence that had been 
 preached without Blake's fire by poets as far back as Thom- 
 son. Blake's child can not conceive of a state in which he 
 could "see a falling tear" and not ''seek for kind relief." 
 The child interprets this benevolent spirit first in terms of 
 the domestic life with which he is familiar, and then in 
 terms of bird life. 
 
288 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Can a father see his child 
 Weep, nor be with sorrow filled? 
 Can a mother sit and hear 
 An infant groan, an infant fear? 
 * 
 
 And can He who smiles on all 
 Hear the wren with sorrows small, 
 Hear the small bird's grief and care, 
 Hear the woes the infants bear, 
 
 And not sit beside the nest, 
 Pouring pity in their breast; 
 And not sit the cradle near. 
 Weeping tear on infant's tear; 
 
 He doth give His joy to all; 
 He becomes an infant small. 
 
 Here the conception is closer to Christianity, and there is 
 also a faint suggestion of teaching the child, although the 
 child is speaking. 
 
 In Songs of Innocence the opposites of those poems 
 which treat the same subjects in a mood of protest in Songs 
 of Experience are pervaded by the spirit of benevolence. 
 In these the poet is closer to the outward events of life. 
 Holy Thursday is one of the group which reflect actual ex- 
 perience, or at least approach it. It is connected with that 
 century-old institution, the annual charity sermon, which 
 was preached on a stated day, and which charity children 
 attended in a body. They were garbed in the distinctive 
 dress of their schools, each group distinguished by a certain 
 color. ^ Holy Thursday is one of the earliest of the group, 
 the first draft being included in the manuscript known as 
 
 1 Compare the dress of Lamb and Coleridge while pupils at 
 Christ's Hospital. 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 289 
 
 An Island in the Moon} The background associates the 
 poem with St. Paul's in London. Blake has developed the 
 charity motive more vividly than Thomson, who had also 
 noticed the happy songs of institutional children. Blake 
 pleads with men not to look unsympathetically upon this 
 throng of innocent children, and has enriched the poem by 
 images from nature. The deep love and humanity which 
 pervade the poignant lines in The Little Black Boy are here 
 also appealingly phrased in connection with the multitudes 
 of children who enter St. Paul's. 
 
 'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, 
 The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green, 
 Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, 
 Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow. 
 
 O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town! 
 Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own. 
 The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, 
 Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands. 
 
 Now like a mighty wind they raise to Heaven the voice of song, 
 Or Hke harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among. 
 Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; 
 Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. 
 
 The poem reveals Blake's ability to take a subject from 
 common life and to depict it in lines that are definite and 
 concrete. He has localized his subject and given it firmer 
 outlines than can be found in the most typical Songs of 
 Innocence. In this near approach to physical reality he 
 has not refrained from applying the moral in the last line. 
 The sorrows of the little chimney-sweepers are con- 
 ceived sentimentally by depicting the pathetic joy which the 
 misused creatures draw from a mere dream. It is not ac- 
 
 1 Mr. John Sampson, op. cit., page liv : "1784 circa, Writes An 
 Island in the Moon, containing earliest of Songs of Innocence." 
 
290 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 cidental that Blake was drawn to these children of soot 
 and smoke. It is an historical fact that these boys often 
 had a fire lighted under them to force them to climb into a 
 chimney which they feared.^ Blake does not intrude 
 sophisticated notions of grown-ups, except possibly in 
 the last line, but allows the child, in his own simple lan- 
 guage, to arouse humanitarian sympathy without a direct 
 appeal for it. Like Southey fifteen years later in The Battle 
 of Blenheim, Blake has written in the main with artistic de- 
 tachment and objectivity that make a powerful appeal be- 
 cause the terrible conditions which worked injustice on help- 
 less children are imaginatively realized. His phrasing of 
 the pathetic ray of hope for happiness in their work is more 
 convincing than many lines of moralizing or preachment. 
 
 When my mother died I was very young, 
 And my father sold me wihile yet my tongue 
 Could scarcely cry " 'weep ! 'weep ! 'weep ! 'weep !" 
 So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. 
 
 There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, 
 That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved : so I said 
 "Hush, Tom ! never mind it, for when your head's bare 
 You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." 
 
 And so he was quiet, and that very night, 
 
 As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! — 
 
 That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, 
 
 Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. 
 
 And by came an Angel who had a bright key, 
 And he opened the coffins and set them all free; 
 Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run. 
 And wash in a river, and shine in the sun. 
 
 ^ "drove him up the chimney with blows, pin proddings, and 
 even with the lighting of a fire beneath his feet." O. Jocelyn Dun- 
 lop: English Apprenticeship and Child Labour, p. 271, 1912, London, 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 291 
 
 Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, 
 They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind ; 
 And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, 
 He'd have God for his father, and never want joy. 
 
 And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark, 
 And got with our bags and our brushes to work. 
 The' the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm; 
 So if all do their duty they need not fear harm. 
 
 In Songs of Experience and Auguries of Innocence, 
 Blake is in the direct line of development from Shaftesbury 
 and Thomson, and, moreover, shows the more daring phras- 
 ings of the Revolutionary period in which he lived. Except 
 for the group of poems in which he is close to grimly real 
 suffering and misfortune that are developed in their hu- 
 manitarian aspects, so that he is tempted like the moral 
 writers to suggest a moral for the benefit of children, Songs 
 of Innocence reveals the purest form of the poets' dream of 
 a happy state of childhood. More successfully than other 
 poets of the century he has refrained from moralizing 
 childhood. 
 
 After all, the true secret of Blake's success lies in his 
 reverence for childhood in all its manifestations. ^ He did 
 not kneel before it in the same sense as Wordsworth, who 
 deified the child by imaginatively exalting it in the Ode. 
 Neither did Blake look upon the child in the spirit of 
 Eugene Field's Little Boy Blue, where the parents behold 
 in the rusty tin soldiers, standing in the array in which their 
 child left them, an altar at which to worship the mystery 
 
 1 Langhorne's Enlargement of the Mind (Epistle II, 1765) 
 answers the question. 
 
 But why should life, so short by Heaven ordained, 
 Be long to thoughtless infancy restrained . . . ? 
 * 
 
 O blind to truth ! to Nature's wisdom blind ! 
 
292 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 of life. With Blake it is the frank acceptance and faithful 
 realization of the child's sense of wonder and mystery, in 
 such poems as The Little Girl Lost and The Little Girl 
 Found (Songs of Experience), that causes children to rec- 
 ognize in their elders a community of feeling which breeds 
 a quick response because of equality and identity of interest. 
 Blake's child spirit is revealed better than anywhere else in 
 that mystical sense which in less simple and human form 
 dominated and motivated his later work not connected with 
 childhood. His elemental frankness and true ballad ob- 
 jectivity made it possible for him to feel and write like one 
 of his poetic children. The sentiment of Blake never be- 
 comes sentimental or forced, for the reason that it is char- 
 acterized by true simplicity of child sentiment. Like the 
 nurse in Nurse's Song, he is one of the group. There is 
 no herding into the fold as in Dorothy Wordsworth's poem ; 
 instead it is "let us away." The children answer, 
 
 "No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, 
 And we cannot go to sleep ; 
 Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, 
 And the hills are all covered with sheep." 
 
 Then follows a spontaneous acquiescence, for children must 
 not be thwarted in their natural desires : 
 
 "Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, 
 And then go home to bed." 
 
 The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed 
 And all the hills echoed. 
 
 At last, then, in spite of tradition that would place fet- 
 ters on children, in place of brimstone-and-fire threats, and 
 in the face of moral strictures and forbiddings, the child is 
 free and can sing in the Laughing Song, 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 293 
 
 When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, 
 And the dimphng stream runs laughing by; 
 When the air does laugh with our merry wit, 
 And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; 
 
 When the meadows laugh with lively green, 
 
 And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene. 
 
 When Mary and Susan and Emily 
 
 With their sweet round mouths sing, "Ha, Ha, He !" 
 
 When painted birds laugh in the shade, 
 
 When our table with cherries and nuts is spread, 
 
 Come live, and be merry, and join with me. 
 
 To sing the sweet chorus of "Ha, Ha, He !" 
 
 Blake's achievement of placing the child on a plane where 
 his desires and impulses are recognized as facts to be un- 
 hesitatingly accepted in place of being repressed or made 
 over into something else, entitles him to the position of 
 pioneer poet in the modern sense of poetry about children, 
 where the ideal is that oneness with nature is the "glory 
 of Childhood". 
 
 The Christian terminology which Blake took over in 
 his poems is not out of harmony with his essentially natural- 
 istic conception of childhood. Unless he had coined an en- 
 tirely new vocabulary, which would have militated against 
 clearness, as it does where he has invented fantastic phrases 
 in his later poems, ^ he could not well avoid using such terms 
 as "Shepherd," "Lamb," "God," "Angel," "Heaven," 
 "Father," "Maker," which were ready at hand, but to which 
 he did not always attach the traditional theological concep- 
 tions. Blake's children speak of their maker as of a friend. 
 There is no suggestion in the child lyrics of an external 
 God ; they are not conscious of an anthropomorphic, absolute 
 
 1 Compare "Oothoon," "Golgonooza," "Bowlahoola," "Ololon." 
 
294 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 monarch who rules heaven and earth as in the Miltonic 
 conception ; there is no supernatural being whom they must 
 fear as in the economy of Watts. When Blake's intention 
 is most evident, as in The Shepherd, the child interprets his 
 observations without being disturbed by the thought of 
 anything but the shepherd in the fields with his ewes and 
 lambs. In The Lamb the child in the same mood spon- 
 taneously identifies himself with animals, who are 
 then at once identified with God, Far from being blas- 
 phemy, this is in the naturalistic conception the highest com- 
 pliment the child is capable of paying its maker. The sense 
 of fellowship, and the untutored acceptance of God as one of 
 its own kind, which are expressed in all of the child's songs 
 with unaffected naturalness that suggests no outside inter- 
 ference, are signs of inborn reverence. According to the 
 naturalistic view, the greatest token of respect is the child's 
 acceptance of its elders as equals. 
 
 In The Voice of the Devil, Blake outHnes his conviction 
 that all bibles and sacred codes have been the cause of the 
 erroneous belief that man has *'two real existing principles, 
 viz., a Body and a Soul," and that ''Energy, called Evil, is 
 alone from the Body," and that "God will torment Man in 
 Eternity for following his Energies." Blake holds the 
 following contraries to be true ; "that man has no Body 
 distinct from his Soul ; for that called Body is a portion of 
 Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul," 
 and that "Energy is the only life, and is from the Body 
 . . . Energy is Eternal Delight." There is nothing 
 devilish, therefore, in following natural energy and desire. 
 Blake condemns Milton, for instance, for fettering his 
 angels and giving liberty of action to devils. The truer 
 conception would have been, in his estimation, to recognize 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 295 
 
 natural desire, which can be restrained and made passive 
 only in those who are weak enough to be restrained ; but to 
 be weak is to be without energy; that is, without life. 
 When Blake wished to reawaken men to his belief, he held 
 up the child. Although he recognizes the disturbing in- 
 fluence of man in Songs of Experience, he had written into 
 the Songs of Innocence his vision of the unrestrained phy- 
 sical delight of innocent children, who manifest a soul life 
 unspoiled and not made self-conscious by institutional inter- 
 ference. ^ 
 
 Blake's historical position near the close of a develop- 
 ment that had taken place for nearly three quarters of a 
 century made it possible for his exuberant spirit to find a 
 positive outlet after the ground had been cleared by poets 
 during the decades before 1789. In place of talking about 
 the child or to it, Blake is at one with the child. "Blake 
 carried himself back into the days of childhood, when all 
 was joy and innocence, and when the new-born soul felt 
 no other emotions but life and the joy of living." - If man 
 
 1 Compare Motto to the Songs of Innocence and of Experience: 
 
 The Good are attracted by men's perceptions, 
 And think not for themselves ; 
 Till Experience teaches them to catch 
 And to cage the fairies and elves. 
 
 {Rossetti MS.) 
 
 Compare also Infant Sorrow: 
 
 I beheld the Priest by day, 
 Where beneath my vines he lay. 
 Like a serpent in the day 
 Underneath my vines he lay. 
 
 {Rossetti MS.) 
 
 2 William Blake, Poet and Mystic, by P. Berger, translated by 
 Daniel H. Conner, Chapman and Hall, London, 1914, p. 286. 
 
296 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 would but be natural, his happiness would be as unques- 
 tioning as that of the child in Infant Joy: 
 
 "I have no name: 
 
 I am but two days old." 
 
 What shall I call thee? 
 
 "I happy am, 
 
 Joy is my name." 
 
 Sweet joy befall thee! 
 
 Pretty Joy! 
 
 Sweet Joy, but two days old. 
 
 Sweet Joy I call thee : 
 
 Thou dost smile, 
 
 I sing the while, 
 
 Sweet joy befall thee ! 
 
 This is pagan in its headlong abandon to the joy of 
 living. For the ideal of the institutional child the poet has 
 substituted the naturalistic delights of a child who in na- 
 tural goodness has inherited happiness because he is living 
 unquestioningly in harmony with the spirit of love that 
 would visibly pervade the world if man did not interfere. 
 Blake had the fullest vision of universal benevolence that 
 wishes happiness for all men; but to be happy they must 
 be again like children — innocent, gladsome, and acknow- 
 ledge no restraint from without. 
 
 Professor Irving Babbitt may inveigh against the evils 
 which he sees growing out of such a naturalistic abandon 
 to the god Whirl as Blake has reflected in Infant Joy, 
 Laughing Song, and Spring. However, those forces of 
 benevolence which had been at work since Shaftesbury, 
 and which had gradually modified the attitude of poets 
 toward children, reached in Blake's Songs of Innocence 
 their highest literary expression in the exaltation of mani- 
 
WILLIAM BLAKE 297 
 
 festations of instinctive goodness and universal benevolence 
 which recognize fellowship with animals. In his protest 
 against what he considered unjust outside control, from 
 which children had for ages suffered at the hands of man, 
 Blake could hardly have depicted the naturalistic concep- 
 tion more unqualifiedly than in Spring. The efifusiveness of 
 the child in this poem shows the extreme recoil from the 
 decorum of the institutional ideal. 
 
 Little boy, 
 Full of joy; 
 Little girl, 
 Sweet and small ; 
 Cock does crow, 
 So do you; 
 Merry voice, 
 Infant noise, 
 Merrily, merrily, to welcome in the year. 
 
 Little lamb. 
 Here I am; 
 Come and lick 
 My white neck; 
 Let me pull 
 Your soft wool; 
 Let me kiss 
 Your soft face: 
 Merrily, merrily, we welcome in the year. 
 
 This is a romantic child. If energy, as Blake held, is 
 the manifestation of soul, this child is richly endowed. Un- 
 like the type he supersedes, Blake's child, it is obvious, has 
 great capacity for feeling, but not for thought, because no 
 restraining forces are recognized. Judgment is romanti- 
 cally subordinated to feeling, which is held to be naturally 
 good. Certainly, Blake's child in Spring has no inklings of 
 
298 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 the restrictive conscience for which Shaftes'bury substituted 
 expansive emotion. Spontaneity is completely realized. 
 Beyond this the poets who follow Shaftesbury can not go in 
 their portrayal of children who wholeheartedly respond to 
 impulses. The child is no longer a rational being, but a 
 spontaneous creature that impulsively follows natural in- 
 stincts. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 More than any other eminent Enghsh man of letters, 
 Wordsworth is the poet of childhood. His poetry depicts 
 the moods and activities of children more extensively than 
 verse prior to his. His heart was attuned to childhood in 
 all its manifestations. Yet he did not write for children. 
 Wordsworth's classification of his poems, mystifying in 
 other respects, indicates clearly that he did not attempt a 
 body of verse for children. Nevertheless, with affectionate 
 and loving attention to detail he has noticed them from 
 nursery days to school time. His poems contain a gallery 
 of individual portraits, especially of subjects from the 
 humbler walks of life, in London as well as in the Lake 
 District and the southwestern counties of England. 
 
 Although Wordsworth extended the boundaries of poet- 
 ry to include all phases of childhood, his treatment is in 
 harmony with that of poets from Prior to Crabbe. His 
 poetry, with that of Blake, represents the fine flowering of 
 the eighteenth-century attitude toward childhood. ^ There 
 are, for instance, manifest suggestions of harmony between 
 his lines on native fields and those that have been noted from 
 Akenside to Southey. Sometimes, also, he echoes the very 
 words of eighteenth-century poets, as in the third book of 
 The Prelude, where his lines on the habits of youths at Cam- 
 bridge University recall Tickell's passage on student life at 
 Oxford, 
 
 1 Until a careful study of Wordsworth's sources has been 
 made in the light of eighteenth-century influences, his poetic method 
 can not be fully understood. 
 
300 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Where the Black Edward passed his beardless youth. ^ 
 
 Although Blake and Wordsworth alike felt the strong 
 urge of influences at work in the eighteenth century, there is 
 between them a difference of emphasis in the treatment of 
 childhood. Both poets are fervent and warm in conception 
 and expression. Yet, except possibly for a poem like the 
 Ode, the body of Wordsworth's poetry about childhood re- 
 veals a saner treatment. Wordsworth remarked of the 
 Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience: ''There is 
 something in the madness of this man which interests me 
 more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." 
 Nevertheless, Wordsworth held closer than Blake to com- 
 
 1 Thomas Tickell's on Queen Caroline's rebuilding the lodg- 
 ings of the Black Prince and Henry V. at Queens College, Oxford: 
 
 In that coarse age were princes fond to dwell 
 
 With meagre monks, and haunt the silent cell. 
 
 Sent from the Monarch's to the Muses' court, 
 
 Their meals were frugal, and their sleeps were short; 
 
 To couch at curfew time they thought no scorn. 
 
 And froze at matins every winter morn; 
 
 They read on early book the starry frame, 
 
 And lisped each constellation by its name; 
 
 Art after art still dawning to their view. 
 
 And their mind opening as their stature grew. 
 
 In addressing his alma mater, Wordsworth contrasts the luxury- 
 loving youths of his day with the abstemious "nurslings" who sub- 
 mitted to academic discipline "from their first childhood," 
 
 When, in forlorn and naked chambers cooped 
 
 And crowded, o'er the ponderous books they hung 
 
 Like caterpillars eating out their way 
 
 In silence, or with keen devouring noise 
 
 Not to be tracked or fathered. Princes then 
 
 At matins froze, and couched at curfew-time. 
 
 Trained up through piety and zeal to prize 
 
 Spare diet, patient labour, and plain weeds. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 301 
 
 men experience; the reader feels that he is in the presence 
 of real children. The difference is due, in part at least, to 
 poetic method. Wordsworth preferred to write, not like 
 the earlier master during the spontaneous overflow of emo- 
 tion, but in his favorite tranquil mood of recollected emotion. 
 Unlike Blake, and much more like Sir Walter Scott, though 
 in a different mood, he loved to localize his affections. His 
 geographical sense, which led to the choice of definite back- 
 grounds in most instances, kept him in the company of chil- 
 dren of flesh and blood. 
 
 His deep sense of moral responsibility served to em- 
 phasize this trait of stern fidelity to outward fact. Blake's 
 preternaturally bright and vivid backgrounds can seldom be 
 localized. Blake asked for his visions of delight no merely 
 terrestrial location. In Wordsworth, however, the geo- 
 graphy of the background against which he oibserved chil- 
 dren is as a rule clear and definite. Blake's Echoing Green 
 will never be identified, because it incorporates the essential 
 delights of children at play on any English village green. 
 To localize it, as one loves to do with Wordworth's poems, 
 would be out of keeping with Blake's vision of universal de- 
 light for children at play out of doors. In The Prelude, 
 Wordsworth individualizes and identifies the Bowling Green 
 on the hillside above Lake Windermere, because his vision 
 of happiness and contentment is affectionately associated 
 with specific localities. His local feeling is strong. His 
 mood demands, like Michael's at the unfinished sheep-fold, 
 an object in nature with which to associate emotional ex- 
 perience. Wordsworth is seldom concerned merely with 
 airy fancies; he usually gives them a local habitation and 
 a name. He gains in realism because he conveys the im- 
 pression of writing with his eye on the individual child 
 and his experiences. 
 
302 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Like Blake, Wordsworth found in the child unspoiled 
 by man the most satisfying illustration of the simple life. 
 He too would rejuvenate society by way of the child. But 
 less radical than Blake, he did not wish to do away with 
 institutions that militate against happiness, but instead to 
 reform them by modifications which he considered practi- 
 cal. His expressed wish to be considered as a teacher or as 
 nothing, prompted him to write expository passages on the 
 need of reform. As a result the humanitarian and ethical 
 aspects are more obvious than in Blake. Wordsworth's 
 preoccupation with childhood led him not only to a state- 
 ment of moods which are the essence of universal child- 
 hood, as in the Ode, or We Are Seven, but also to a con- 
 sideration of the practical problems of education, as in The 
 Prelude, and the reform of industrial abuses, as in The 
 Excursion. 
 
 The extent and depth of his interest in the varying 
 manifestations of childhood are reflected in his notice of 
 children under many circumstances and moods from birth 
 to death, in the home or near it, in the fields and beside 
 streams, in school or on the way to and from it. Unlike 
 his predecessors, he observes children with equal variety 
 and interest in the city as well as in the country. It is 
 true that his somewhat rigid nature could not unbend suffi- 
 ciently to make him the care-free companion of children — 
 in the Anecdote for Fathers he appears awkward and ex- 
 ternal — ^but he nevertheless reveals a consistent deep in- 
 terest in them, and certainly never fails to notice them. Al- 
 though he could not sport with them, he evinces an affection 
 that prompted and lay at the heart of his philosophy of life, 
 and conditioned his poetic expression of it. If he was not 
 able to abandon himself to them in their lightsome moods, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 303 
 
 he yet honored the man who like the Wanderer in The Ex- 
 cursion loved to have children about him : 
 
 The rough sports 
 And teasing ways of children vexed not him. 
 
 (I, 415-416). 
 Michael tells his son that they had been playmates among 
 the hills, so that Luke did not 
 
 Lack any pleasure which a boy can know. 
 When Wordsworth expressed the anxiety he felt for Eng- 
 land, he unaffectedly closed his sonnet by emphasizing 
 afifection for his country in an image of the child whose 
 devotion is whole-hearted and unquestioning. ^ In his most 
 inspired lines, as well as in those which show him doggedly 
 but vainly attempting to practice the theory of his Preface, 
 Wordsworth is never far from contemplation of the simple 
 thoughts and emotions of children. 
 
 As a schoolboy at Hawkeshead he had observed chil- 
 dren with a discriminating eye. When he returned during 
 the summer vacation after his first year at Cambridge, he 
 noticed that a change had come over children of those 
 '*Whose occupation I really loved." It was a change Hke 
 that wrought by an eight-days' absence from a garden in 
 
 ^ ° ' pale-faced babes whom I had left 
 
 In arms, now rosy prattlers at the feet 
 Of a pleased grandame tottering up and down; 
 And growing girls whose beauty, filched away 
 With all its pleasant promises, was gone 
 To deck some slighted playmate's homely cheek. 2 
 
 1 Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, 
 XVII. 
 
 2 The Prelude (IV, 203-208). — Grandchildren are not fre- 
 quently mentioned during the century before Wordsworth. He 
 notices them again in Descriptive Sketches (1. 152), Anticipation, 
 and in The Westmoreland Girl (To My Grandchildren). Burns 
 has suggestive lines in New Year's Day and Second Epistle to Davie. 
 
304 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Unlike the bachelor poets of the eighteenth century (in 
 Lines on a Sleeping Infant Cowper takes refuge in generali- 
 ties), he enjoyed the inestimable advantage of children in 
 his own household, and also the benefit of Dorothy's "see- 
 ing" eyes.^ One of her letters to Lady Beaumont indi- 
 cates that his delicate observation of traits that make for 
 subtle characterization even in infants v^as stimulated 
 probably by Dorothy's sympathetic observation of children: 
 "Catherine is the only funny child in the family; the rest 
 of the children are lively, but Catherine is comical in every 
 look and motion. Thomas perpetually forces a tender 
 smile by his simplicity, but Catherine makes you laugh out- 
 right, though she can hardly say a dozen words, and she 
 joins in the laugh, as if sensible of the drollery of her 
 appearance." 
 
 In its reflection of the fleeting moods of an individual 
 child. Characteristics of a Child Three Years Old (1811) 
 definitely marks Wordsworth as a precursor of the modern 
 attitude, which tries to shadow forth in poetry such evan- 
 escent moods as Wordsworth recorded in his own way by 
 reference to the beauty of nature. He observes the child 
 when it is alone, and when it plays in the presence of ad- 
 miring friends or relatives. 
 
 Loving she is, and tractable, though wild; 
 
 And Innocence hath privilege in her 
 
 To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes; 
 
 And feats of cunning; and the pretty round 
 
 Of trespasses, affected to provoke 
 
 Mock-chastisement and partnership in play. 
 
 And, as a faggot sparkles on the hearth, 
 
 Not less if unattended and alone 
 
 Than when both young and old sit gathered round 
 
 And take delight in its activity; 
 
 1 The Prelude, XIV, 232ff. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 305 
 
 Even so this happy Creature of herself 
 
 Is all-sufficient; solitude to her 
 
 Is blithe society, who fills the air 
 
 With gladness and involuntary songs. 
 
 Light are her sallies as the tripping fawn's 
 
 Forth-startled from the fern where she lay couched ; 
 
 Unthought-of, unexpected, as the stir 
 
 Of the soft b'*eezes ruffling the meadow-flowers, 
 
 Or from before it chasing wantonly 
 
 The many-coloured images imprest 
 
 Upon the bosom of a placid lake. 
 
 Dorothy has adapted herself exquisitely to the child's 
 point of view in the Address to a Child During a Boisterous 
 Winter Evening (1806). Without a suggestion of teach- 
 ing, the lines picture Dorothy and the child by the winter- 
 evening fireside. The fireside matter has here been de- 
 veloped with delicate attention to the thought life and emo- 
 tional reactions of an individual child. He is no longer, 
 as before Burns, merely present, but his interest in the 
 phenomena of a winter storm determines the choice of 
 imagery. 
 
 Hark ! over the roof he makes a pause. 
 
 And growls as if he would fix his claws 
 
 Right in the slates, and with a huge rattle 
 
 Drive them down, like men in battle: 
 
 — But let him range round; he does us no harm, 
 
 We build up the fire, we're snug and warm; 
 
 Untouched by his breath see the candle shines bright, 
 
 And burns with a clear and steady light; 
 
 Books have we to read, — ^but that half-stifled knell, 
 
 Alas ! 'tis the sound of the eight o'clock bell. 
 
 — Come now we'll to bed! and when we are there 
 
 He may work his own will, and what shall we care? 
 
 He may knock at the door, — we'll not let him in; 
 
 May drive at the windows, — we'll laugh at his din; 
 
 Let him seek his own home wherever it be ; 
 
 Here's a cosie warm house for Edward and me. 
 
306 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 There is a suggestion of humor in the story of the mi- 
 gration of the poor priest from Northumiberland to the 
 Lakes. In their old age the priest and his wife never tired 
 of recounting their experiences on the road. The motley 
 train of horses with jingling bells and panniers, and the ass 
 which carried their children, excited the curiosity of many 
 a village Dogberry and "staid guardian of the public peace." 
 Wordsworth singles out the priest's children (The Excur- 
 sion, VII, 72-76J : 
 
 Rocked by the motion of a trusty ass 
 Two ruddy children hung, a well-poised freight, 
 Each in a basket nodding drowsily; 
 Their bonnets. I remember, wreathed with flowers, 
 Which told it was the pleasant month of June. 
 
 On the basis of his poetry it would be possible to 
 reconstruct the life of a young child from the moment of 
 its birth. He does not relegate children to a similitude, 
 but in all his poems reveals a personal interest. The in- 
 fant at the moment of its birth is interesting to the poet 
 who has brooded on the destiny of man. He carries on 
 the eighteenth-centurv desire for children in the home, as 
 in The Warning (1833), where the humble cottage is 
 
 blest 
 With a new visitant, an infant guest. 
 
 The lines To the Reverend Dr. Wordsuwrth (1820) con- 
 tain charming glimpses of the age-old custom of minstrels 
 who played their Christmas tunes under cottage windows, a 
 custom not noted in connection with childhood by poets 
 during the century before Wordsworth. At such times un- 
 bidden tears rise 
 
 For names once heard, and heard no more; 
 Tears brightened by the serenade 
 For infant in the cradle laid. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 307 
 
 In The Excursion (V, 278) he notices the infant at time of 
 baptism, "a day of solemn ceremonial," the infant being 
 
 For this occasion daintily adorned, 
 At the baptismal font, 
 
 where the consecrating element cleanses "the original stain" 
 and ''corrupt affections," and where, 
 
 high as the thought of man 
 Can carry virtue, virtue is professed. 
 
 (V, 287-288) 
 
 His sonnet Baptism (1827) likewise indicates that Words- 
 worth did not follow literally the doctrine of natural good- 
 ness. In addition to the ceremony itself he notices the 
 circle of family and friends at the font, the infant being, 
 meanwhile, not overlooked. 
 
 In his lines To the Moan (1835) he gives a charming 
 glimpse of the gestures of an infant attracted by the 
 
 moon, whose powers 
 
 are charms 
 That fascinate the very Babe in arms. 
 While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright, 
 Spreading his little palms in his glad Mother's sight. 
 
 Dorothy's The Cottager to her Infant (1805), ''sug- 
 gested to her while 'beside my sleeping children," is a 
 homely lullaby not at all conceived in the traditional man- 
 ner. Details of the cottage are those which would naturally 
 attract an infant. The song, which seems to be spontan- 
 eously suggested while the mother is singing to her babe, 
 gives a realistic air of improvisation. 
 
 The days are cold, the nights are long. 
 The north-wind sings a doleful song; 
 Then hush again upon my breast; 
 All merry things are now at rest, 
 Save thee, my pretty Love ! 
 
308 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, 
 The crickets long have ceased their mirth; 
 There's nothing stirring in the house 
 Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse, 
 Then why so busy thou? 
 
 Nay! start not at that sparkling light; 
 *Tis but the moon that shines so bright 
 On the window pane bedropped with rain: 
 Then, little Darling! sleep again. 
 And wake when it is day. 
 
 Lullabies are rare in the century from Prior to Words- 
 worth, probably because it was the age of reason and en- 
 lightenment ; and the strength of the dissenting element, 
 which would not be in sympathy with the beautiful con- 
 ception of the Virgin and Child, militated against a spon- 
 taneous lyrical phrasing of lullabies conceived in the me- 
 dieval tradition. Watts's lullaby is essentially Puritanical. 
 It is not until Coleridge's The Virgin's Cradle Hymn, which 
 he translated from a Latin hymn "copied from a print of 
 the Virgin, in a Roman Catholic village in Germany," that 
 the tender mother spirit of the medieval lullabies finds 
 recognition among Romantic poets. ^ Although Blake 
 combines naturalistic thought and Christian phrasing in his 
 lullabies, he was too much out of sympathy with the Church 
 to enter into the spirit of the Cradle Hymns of the Virgin. 
 How far removed even the transcendental Coleridge was 
 from the traditional spirit of the Virgin and Child is patent 
 in his Christmas Carol ("The shepherds went their hasty 
 way"), which Bullen justly criticizes for ineptness of phras- 
 ing. Dorothy Wordsworth has altogether left the tradition- 
 
 1 Thomas Warton's On Sir Joshua Reynolds' Painted Win- 
 dow (at New College, Oxford), 1782, has the lines: 
 
 Heaven's golden emanation, gleaming mild 
 O'er the mean cradle of the Virgin's Child. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 309 
 
 al element in order to sing in the mood of a cottage mother 
 who, in crooning over her babe, weaves in the commonest 
 facts of household observation. The two additional stanzas, 
 composed by Wordsworth, clearly mark the lullaby as a 
 north of England mother's song. 
 
 Coleridge's A Child's Evening Prayer, written for chil- 
 dren, gives simple expression to sentiments which a child 
 would voice in prayer for members of the household. In 
 Wordsworth's Guilt and Sorrow the unfortunate woman be- 
 gins the story of her life by recollections of her pious father, 
 who taught her in earliest childhood to repeat her evening 
 prayers : 
 
 And I believe that, soon as I began 
 
 To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed, 
 
 And in his hearing there my prayers I said. 
 
 Three poems associated with Dora Wordsworth give 
 intimate glimpses of the poet and his daughter. They re- 
 veal an essentially modern attitude in the poet's willing- 
 ness to note an individual child, from the manifestations of 
 whose interest he catches spiritual gleams that cheer and 
 ennoble the parent who sees in his child the hope of the 
 future. ^ 
 
 One of the nearest approaches he has made to the 
 spontaneous lightsome joy of children in activity is found in 
 The Kitten and Falling Leaves (1804). In spite of its 
 length and the poet's tendency, toward the close, to moralize 
 and forget the infant in thoughts of his own wishes for hap- 
 piness, the poem is a "pretty baby-treat." Under the elder 
 bush in the cottage garden, "little Tabby" works "Like an 
 Indian conjuror" for the amusement of the poet and his 
 infant : 
 
 ^ Compare the attitude of Coleridge toward his infant son 
 Hartley in Frost at Midnight. 
 
310 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 That way look, my Infant, lo! 
 
 What a pretty baby-show ! 
 
 See the Kitten on the wall, 
 
 Sporting with the leaves that fall, 
 
 Withered leaves — one — two — and three — 
 
 From the lofty elder-tree ! 
 
 Through the calm and frosty air 
 
 Of this morning bright and fair, 
 
 Eddying round and round they sink 
 
 Softly, slowly: one might think, 
 
 From the motions that are made, 
 
 Every little leaf conveyed 
 
 Sylph or Faery hither tending, — 
 
 To this lower world descending. 
 
 Each invisible and mute. 
 
 In his wavering parachute. 
 
 — But the Kitten, how she starts. 
 
 Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts ! 
 
 First at one, and then its fellow, 
 
 Just as light and just as yellow; 
 
 There are many now — now one — 
 
 Now they stop and there are none : 
 
 What intenseness of desire 
 
 In her upward eye of fire ! 
 
 With a tiger-leap half-way 
 
 Now she meets the coming prey. 
 
 Lets it go as fast, and then 
 
 Has it in her power again. . . . 
 
 His Address to my Infant Daughter, Dora (on being re- 
 minded that she zi^as a month old that day, September i6, 
 1804) shows how totally the attitude toward children in 
 this type of poem had changed in one hundred years. Prior's 
 courtly lines to a child of quality were written exactly a 
 century earlier. In Wordsworth's parental eyes the infant 
 is a ''mild oflfspring of infirm humanity," and a ''frail, feeble 
 monthHng." These phrases indicate the poet's willingness 
 to face a fact that does not necessarily embellish the subject. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 311 
 
 In his thoughts the child is but one tiny manifestation of 
 the vast forces of the universe. In the contemplation, 
 moreover, of what she would have been had she been 
 born an Indian child, he is carried far from Prior's charm- 
 ing make-believe. The passages in which he observes the 
 nascent smiles of the infant are permeated with that spirit 
 of consecration which is associated with Wordsworth's at- 
 titude toward nature in such a poem as Tintern Abbey. 
 The infant's smiles are ''feelers of love," tokens and signs, 
 which, 
 
 when the appointed season hath arrived, 
 Joy, as her holiest language, shall adopt. 
 
 Like classicist poets he looks beyond the child into the fu- 
 ture; but his forward look is more accurately described as 
 vision — ^that feeling after an elusive something which 
 baffles expression. The urbane perspicuity which satisfied 
 the readers of Prior's day has given place to vague, tanta- 
 lizing emotion. The tokens and signs of this emotion bring 
 spiritual assurances with which writers on childhood had 
 not busied themselves since the days of Earle and Vaughan. 
 In the appealing lines to his favorite daughter Dora ("A 
 little onward lend thy guiding hand," 1816), Wordsworth 
 recalls how he had carried her 
 
 A tottering infant, with compliant stoop 
 From flower to flower supported. 
 
 Now he is her companion still, 
 
 but to curb 
 Thy nymph-like step swift-bounding o'er the lawn. 
 Along loose rocks, or the slippery verge 
 Of foaming torrents. 
 
 Dora is her father's companion in his early-morning walk ; 
 they climb together to the top of ''some smooth ridge" to 
 
312 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 feel the exhilaration of height and distance. He would be 
 her guide through woods and forest 
 
 to behold 
 There how the Original of human art, 
 Heaven-prompted Nature, measures and erects 
 Her temples. . . . 
 
 He reviewed the classical authors with her, and scaled "to 
 heights more glorious still" of Holy Writ, 
 
 where this Darling of my care. 
 Advancing with me hand in hand, may learn, 
 Without forsaking a too earnest world. 
 To calm the affections, elevate the soul, 
 And consecrate her life to truth and love. 
 
 Poets from Thomson to the end of the century had given 
 many glimpses of the loving care of parents for their chil- 
 dren. Yet none is so winning as this in the sincere mani- 
 festation of the heart-felt companionship existing betv^een 
 Wordsworth and his daughter Dora (she was in tempera- 
 ment a second Dorothy), in whom he found support in his 
 old age after he had been deprived of Dorothy's companion- 
 ship by the clouding of her mind. 
 
 Wordsworth's insistence on freedom for children, and 
 their natural right to enjoyment of it in undisturbed, un- 
 supervised communion with nature, is winningly expressed 
 in one of the most appealing of the Duddon sonnets. He 
 observed cottage children at play far from the contamination 
 of cities. There is no suggestion of pastoralities ; Words- 
 worth had observed these children ; and that he wrote with 
 his eye on the object is clear from the fact that the cottage 
 near which the children tumbled has been identified. They 
 are the companions of the solitude-loving Duddon, near 
 whose banks stood the cottage "rude and grey" 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 313 
 
 Whose ruddy children, by the mother's eyes 
 Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day, 
 Thy pleased associates: — light as endless May 
 On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies. (V) 
 
 The natural attractipn which running water has for chil- 
 dren is reflected by the Romanticist poets, who were them- 
 selves ever striving to live over again the care-free days of 
 childhood. Wordsworth is like them in this love for 
 streams and brooks, and when he wishes to correct despon- 
 dency in The Excursion, he points to the simple cottage-boy 
 who is wholly absorbed in play at a mill-dam. 
 
 "May I name 
 Without offence, that fair-faced cottage-boy i 
 Dame Nature's pupil of the lowest forpi, 
 Youngest apprentice in the school of art ! 
 Him, as we entered from the open glen., 
 You might have noticed, busily engaged. 
 Heart, soul, and hands, — in mending the defects 
 Left in the fabric of a leaky dam 
 Raised for enabling this penurious stream 
 To turn a slender mill (that new-made plaything) 
 For his delight — the happiest he of all !" 
 
 (HI, 196-206) 
 
 In their endeavor to win man back to a simple Hfe, poets 
 instinctively held up the child as an ideal example of simple, 
 if not divine, contentment. Wordsworth's wide observa- 
 tion of children in the Lake District provided him with a 
 rich fund of experience. He never ceased to draw upon 
 this in order to give point to the plea that, he intended, 
 should win men by the contemplation of innocent child- 
 hood which spontaneously found its richest enjoyments in 
 the presence of nature. So the group which had been ob- 
 serving the boy are led to thoughts of the divine happiness 
 for which poets of the eighteenth century had longed. 
 
314 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 "Far happiest," answered the desponding Man, 
 
 "If, such as he now is, he might remain ! 
 
 Ah ! what avails imagination high 
 
 Or question deep?" (Ill, 207-210) 
 
 Wordsworth is ever thinking of the problem of the soul life 
 of man. Like Blake he believes that all the sophistications 
 and reasonings of man will lead man nowhere. In his poetry 
 generally, as in the Ode, he is satisfied to rest in childhood, 
 because there the sense of unity has not been disturbed by 
 the interposition of reason. 
 
 The Other, not displeased, 
 Promptly replied' — "My notion is the same. 
 And I, without reluctance, could decline 
 All act of inquisition whence we rise, 
 And what, when breath hath ceased, we may become. 
 Here are we, in a bright and breathing world. 
 Our origin, what matters it?" ^ (III, 233-238) 
 
 No other poet has so widely and sympathetically ob- 
 served children in communion with the external nature 
 poets had exalted from the time of Thomson. Nature and 
 the boy led the group to thoughts of ''natural piety" ; and 
 it was Wordsworth's belief that children were happiest and 
 most effectively taught in the presence of nature.- 
 
 Although he preferred to write of children in rural sur- 
 roundings, Wordsworth, nevertheless, more fully than any 
 poet of the eighteenth century, has observed children in 
 crowded surroundings of the metropolis. 
 
 1 "Wisdom doth live with children round her knees" (Poems 
 Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, IV). 
 
 2 This is likewise the attitude of Coleridge. In Frost at Mid- 
 night the "philosopher" father contemplates in rosy dreams the 
 boyhood days of Hartley, who is to receive spiritual suggestions 
 from his companionship with external nature. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 315 
 
 He often visited London, but was not, any more than 
 the benevolist poets, in sympathy with city Hfe. In the city 
 he pined a discontented sojourner. He refers peevishly to 
 the shrill cries of London streets. Favorite phrases are 
 ''this noisy world," ''monstrous ant-hill," "barricadoed ever- 
 more within the walls of cities," and "mean shapes on every 
 side." He was offended by the environment to which chil- 
 dren were exposed. Referring to the ingenuous moments 
 of his youth when his outlook on life was very simple, he 
 tells in The Prelude of the child placed in the middle of a 
 table surrounded by men and women gathered there by 
 chance. After describing the child's beauty in unsurpassed 
 lines, he fears for its future. As the poet muses over the 
 experience, he thinks that perhaps the child has grown to 
 an age when he can look with envy on the babe who sleeps 
 undisturbed beside a mountain chapel — the image chosen 
 to express his preference for rural innocence and purity. 
 
 foremost of the scenes. 
 Which yet survive in memory, appears 
 One, at v^-hose center sate a lovely Boy, 
 A sportive infant, who, for six months' space, 
 Not more, had been of age to deal about 
 Articulate prattle — Child as beautiful 
 As ever clung around a mother's neck. 
 Or father fondly gazed upon with pride. 
 * 
 
 The Boy had been 
 The pride and pleasure of all lookers-on 
 In whatsoever place, but seemed in this 
 A sort of alien scattered from the clouds. 
 A lusty vigour, more than infantine 
 He was in limb, in cheek a summer rose 
 Just three parts blown — a cottage child — if e'er, 
 By cottage-door on breezy mountain-side, 
 Or in some sheltering vale, was seen a babe 
 By Nature's gift so favoured. Upon a board 
 
316 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Decked with refreshments had this child been placed, 
 
 His little stage in the vast theatre, 
 
 And there he sate surrounded with a throng 
 
 Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men 
 
 And shameless women, treated and caressed; 
 
 Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played, 
 
 While oaths and laughter and indecent speech 
 
 Were rife about him as the songs of birds 
 
 Contending after showers. The mother now 
 
 Is fading out of memory, but I see 
 
 The lovely Boy as I beheld him then 
 
 Among the wretched and the falsely gay. 
 
 Like one of those who walked with hair unsinged 
 
 Amid the fiery furnace. (VII, 334-370) 
 
 His glimpses of child life in London indicate clearly that, 
 if he did not always look with approval, he did look in- 
 tently. His attitude toward London during his first youth- 
 ful visit is channingly described in a beautiful image from 
 child life. Although he saw vulgar men, and observed 
 houses, pavements, streets, and degraded forms on all sides, 
 he was not satisfied with externalities, but 
 
 a simple look 
 Of child-like inquisition now and then 
 Cast upwards on thy countenance, to detect 
 Some inner meanings which might harbour there. 
 
 (Prelude, VIII, 535-538) 
 
 Wordsworth's deep affection for children, and his sym- 
 pathy with the natural love of parents for their children, are 
 reflected in a reminiscence of his first sojourn in London. 
 The passage again reveals his ability to strike off a picture 
 of city life, and is in its place among lines on city children 
 as memorable as the sonnet composed on Westminster 
 Bridge, which reveals the poet of mountain and lakes giving 
 final phrasing to a mood characteristic of a great city. 
 He had observed a father, an artificer, who sat on a stone 
 near an iron paling that enclosed a grass-plot. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 317 
 
 there, in silence, sate 
 This One Man, with a sickly babe outstretched 
 Upon his knee, whom he had thither brought 
 For sunshine, and to breathe the fresher air. 
 Of those who passed, and me who looked at him. 
 He took no heed; but in his brawny arms 
 (The Artificer was to the elbow bare, 
 And from his work this moment had been stolen) 
 He held the child, and, bending over it. 
 As if he were afraid both of the sun 
 And of the air, which he had come to seek, 
 Eyed the poor babe with love unutterable. 
 
 He writes from the point of view of the countryman who 
 pities city folk because of their lack of fresh air and free- 
 dom, and notes the father's timid gestures that would shield 
 the child from sun and breeze, to which Wordsworth had 
 been accustomed from early childhood. The poet's heart 
 was moved; like Thomson he felt for suffering childhood 
 everywhere, but unlike him was able to visualize concretely 
 whatever his sympathetic heart led him to observe. It is 
 characteristic of his wide interest in children that he should 
 have noticed among the "fermenting mass of human-kind" 
 in London this detail of the father with his sickly child. 
 
 In Power of Music (1806) the street fiddler holds men, 
 women, and children spellbound. 
 
 That errand-bound 'Prentice was passing in haste— 
 What matter ! he's caught— and his time runs to waste. 
 
 The fiddler wins coins from old and young, 
 
 and there ! 
 The one-pennied Boy has his penny to spare. 
 
 Even the cripple responds to the rhythm ; and the poet ob- 
 serves 
 
 That Mother, whose spirit in fetters is bound, 
 
 While she dandles the Babe in her arms to the sound. 
 
318 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The earlier Reverie of Poor Susan (1797) shows how a 
 country-bred girl is moved by the song of a caged thrush 
 to forget momentarily the hard streets of London in recol- 
 lection of her native fields. Wordsworth transmutes city 
 surroundings into scenery of her native valley. 
 
 Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, 
 And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. 
 
 Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, 
 Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; 
 And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, 
 The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 
 
 Crowds of men and women and the noises of traffic 
 never appealed to Wordsworth as they did to Charles Lamb, 
 who felt it impossible to be dull in Fleet Street, and who 
 while walking about London streets at night shed tears be- 
 cause of the ''fulness of joy at so much life." Solitude was 
 essential to Wordsworth's being; the Wordsworth Con- 
 cordance notes more than two hundred instances of the 
 words ''soHtude" and ''solitary." He is attracted by the 
 more tranquil side streets where he is free to observe a 
 father with his sick child, or poor Susan, or the fiddler and 
 his audience. He can and does depict with poetic power 
 and sure sense for suggestive detail the endless stream of 
 men and moving things ; the dance of colors, lights, and 
 forms ; the deafening din ; the endless rows of facades ; and 
 shop after shop with inscriptions and flaring signs. But 
 he impatiently escapes from these as from an enemy, and 
 turns 
 
 Abruptly into some sequestered nook, 
 
 Still as a sheltered place where winds blow loud! 
 
 {Prelude, VII, 170-171) 
 
 Here sights and sounds come at intervals only; but he has 
 sketched them with notice of street amusements chieflv 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 319 
 
 designed for children. There are dancing dogs, or he sees 
 a dromedary with performing monkeys on his back; or 
 
 a raree-show is here, 
 With children gathered round. 
 
 (Prelude, VII, I74-I75) 
 
 Before Wordsworth, such elements as the raree-show 
 appeared only in satirical verse ; but Wordsworth has treated 
 amusements of children in a mood of high seriousness that 
 catches spiritual connotations not noticed by poets of the 
 eighteenth century. These elements are more congenial to 
 Wordsworth when he can observe them at a rural fair in one 
 of the dales among his native hills, where on the green 
 stands a speech-maker by rote, 
 Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show 
 
 among the itinerant hawkers and other country-fair attrac- 
 tions for young and old. 
 
 The children now are rich, for the old today 
 
 Are generous as the young . . . 
 
 The days departed start again to life, 
 
 And all the scenes of childhood reappear, 
 
 Faint, but more tranquil. (VIII, 44-50 
 
 Gaiety and cheerfulness prevail among old and young; yet 
 to the brooding poet 
 
 How little they, they and their doings, seem, 
 
 And all that they can further or obstruct ! 
 
 Through utter weakness pitiably dear. 
 
 As tender infants are : and yet how great ! 
 
 For all things serve them. (VIII, 59-63) 
 
 They are ministered to by rocks, clouds, and 
 
 The wild brooks prattling from invisible haunts ; 
 And old Helvellyn, conscious of the stir 
 Which animates this day their calm abode. 
 
 (VIII, 67-69) 
 
320 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 In the ''turbulent" city Wordsworth felt the debt he owed 
 to nature and ''rural peace," where his heart had been first 
 opened to beauty. He has enriched the material of satirical 
 poets by throwing over commonplace events and experiences 
 a halo born of imaginative treatment stirred by deep emo- 
 tion. ^ 
 
 In their preoccupation with soHtude in forests and by 
 streams, poets had overlooked the possibilities of holidays 
 enjoyed by children at fairs, theatres, and amusement 
 places. Prior's Alma (1718) gives only a side glance to 
 Smithfield Fair. ^ It is a curious fact that the only full and 
 detailed picture of a city amusement resort should have 
 been drawn as observed by the boy from a remote shire in 
 the north of England. It was to be expected that he 
 would be profoundly moved by the orators in Parliament. 
 
 Oh ! the beating heart, 
 When one among the prime of these rose up, — 
 One, of whose name from childhood we had heard 
 Familiarly, a household term, like those, 
 The Bedfords, Glosters. Salisburys, of old 
 Whom the fifth Harry talks of. (VII, 493-498) 
 
 This is the mood of a boy bred like Wordsworth to solid 
 stability and faith in British institutions ; it is in harmony 
 too with his characteristic elevation of spirit. His vivid 
 lines on Bartholomew Fair come somewhat as a surprise. 
 Temperamentally out of sympathy with the perpetual whirl 
 
 1 Contrast the luxuriant imagery of Frost at Midnight. 
 
 2 Now mark, dear Richard, from the age 
 That children tread this worldly stage. 
 Broom-staff or poker they bestride. 
 And round the parlour love to ride; 
 Till thoughtful father's pious care 
 Provides his brood, next Smithfield Fair, 
 
 With supplemental hobby-horses. (Canto I) 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 321 
 
 of trivial objects and the anarchy and din ''barbarian and 
 infernal" of such a place, this simple north-country youth 
 was momentarily fascinated by the 
 
 phantasma, 
 Monstrous in color, motion, shape, sight, sound. 
 
 that constituted for him a "Parliament of Monsters." What 
 fascinated him was that he saw there 
 
 blank confusion ! true epitome 
 Of what the mighty city is herself, 
 To thousands upon thousands of her sons. 
 
 (VII, 722-724) 
 
 It was a shock for eyes and ears to see how tents and booths, 
 
 as if the whole were one vast mill, 
 Are vomiting, receiving on all sides, 
 Men, Women, three-years' Children, Babes in arms. 
 
 (719-721) 
 
 The passage depicts the motley spectacle of "All out-o'-the- 
 way, far-fetched, perverted things" in marvellous array. 
 
 The midway region, and above. 
 Is thronged with staring pictures and huge scrolls. 
 Dumb proclamations of the Prodigies ; 
 With chattering monkeys dangling from their poles. 
 And children whirling in their roundabouts; 
 With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes, 
 And crack the voice in rival ship, the crowd 
 Inviting; with buffoons against buffoons 
 Grimacing, writhing, screaming, — him who grinds 
 The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves, 
 Rattles the salt-box, thumps the kettle-drum. 
 And him who at the trumpet puffs his cheeks. 
 The silver-collared Negro with his timbrel. 
 Equestrians, tum'blers, women, girls, and boys. 
 Blue-breeched, pink-vested, with high-towering plumes. — 
 
322 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 All moveables of wonder, from all parts, 
 Are here — Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs, 
 The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig, 
 The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire, 
 Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl, 
 The Bust that speaks and moves its goggling eyes. 
 The Wax-work, Clock-work, all the marvellous craft 
 Of modern Merlins, Wild Beasts, Puppet-shows. 
 
 (VII, 691-713)- 
 
 It is in fact a lively roll-call of what any child w^ould delight 
 to see, and the passage reproduces the spirit of youthful ex- 
 citement and rapid change of interest easily satisfied on 
 such a crowded stage. 
 
 Wordsworth had also been attracted by pantomime at 
 Sadler's Wells, which must have been to English children 
 of that age what the Hippodrome is to American children. 
 With the unaffected delight of youth he took his seat there 
 "more than once" to see 
 
 giants and dwarfs. 
 
 Clowns, conjurors, posture-masters, harlequins, 
 
 Amid the uproar of the rabblement. 
 
 Perform their feats. (VII, 271-274) 
 
 Wordsworth's interest was that of a healthy youngster 
 who with his worship of nature could blend pleasures of 
 the average child. He was one of the noisy crew of school- 
 boys at Hawkeshead, and he was equally a partaker of the 
 more superficial pleasures provided by London for its chil- 
 dren. At Sadler's Wells he beheld 
 
 The champion. Jack the Giant-killer : Lo ! 
 
 He dons his coat of darkness; on the stage 
 
 Walks, and achieves his wonders, from the eye 
 
 Of living Mortal covert, "as the moon 
 
 Hid in her vacant interlunar cave." 
 
 Delusion bold! and how can it be wrought? 
 
 The garb he wears is black as death, the word 
 
 ''Invisible" flames forth upon his chest. (VII, 280-287) 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - 323 
 
 Yet, even in those days, he had made no small progress 
 in ''meditations holy and sublime" : 
 
 Yet something of a girlish child-like gloss 
 Of novelty survived of scenes like these ; 
 Enjoyment haply handed down from times 
 When at a country-playhouse, some rude barn 
 Tricked out for that proud use, if I perchance 
 Caught, on a sumrri^r evening through a chink 
 In the old wall, an unexpected glimpse 
 Of daylight, the bare thought of where I was 
 Gladdened me more than if I had been led 
 Into a dazzling cavern of romance, 
 Crowded with Genii busy among works 
 Not to be looked at by the common sun. 
 
 (VII, 446-457) 
 Although it is clear from Ashton's researches ^ that a 
 kind of entertainment appreciated by children was in vogue 
 during the reign of Queen Anne, and although it is known 
 that there were Christmas pantomimes, it is remarkable 
 that these are not noticed by poets even in the satirical 
 vein. Such Christmas theatricals and pantomimes as are 
 designed especially for children at Yuletide in New York 
 must have been common also in the London of those 
 days. Although the Puritans had in 1642 made Christmas 
 a day of prayer and fasting, pantomimes and Christmas 
 plays seem to have flourished from the days of the seven- 
 teenth century itself. Merrymaking is implied, for instance, 
 in Anna L. Barbauld's Groans of the Tankard: 
 
 No Carnival is even Christmas here 
 
 And one long Lent involves the meagre year. 
 
 The Christmas Harlequinades which were given at Co- 
 vent Garden and Drury Lane date from the seventeenth 
 century, and were at their height under Garrick. They 
 
 1 Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, by John Ashton. 
 Compare also A Right Merrie Christmasse by the same author. 
 
324 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 opened with a fairy tale, the characters of which changed to 
 harlequin, columbine, and clown of the pantomime that fol- 
 lowed. There were Christmas plays at Manchester Gram- 
 mar School during 1739, 1740, and 1741. 'The Monthly Re- 
 view" in 1774 has a good review of A Christmas Tale in 
 Five Parts, A Nezv Dramatic Entertainment. 
 
 Children must surely have been diverted by the St. 
 George plays with Old Father Christmas. Professor 
 Manly quotes to show that the version he prints was ased 
 in the eighteenth century: 'The man from whom I took 
 (it) down had performed at Brill in the year 1807, and his 
 father had done the same at Thame Park in the previous 
 century." If the Lutterworth Christmas Play would have 
 made less appeal to children, the Revesby Sword Play, Pro- 
 fessor Manly's version of which is dated ''October ye 20, 
 1779," would have fascinated them. 
 
 Carey does not notice theatricals in Sally in Our Alley 
 (1715), although the thrifty apprentice lover says that he 
 will save his money for Sally against the coming of Christ- 
 mas. Christmas is, indeed, infrequently noticed in connec- 
 tion with childhood. Wordsworth has more fully than 
 other poets referred to the holiday which is identified with 
 children. He has noticed it in the Idle Shepherd-Boys, 
 To the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, The Prelude, and The Thorn, 
 and connects the holiday with childhood in each poem. 
 
 In spite of all Wordsworth's childlike wonder, he is not 
 confused by his novel experiences in London, but while tell- 
 ing the pathetic story of the Maid of Buttermere is loyal 
 to his ideal of the simple life far from city excitements, and 
 writes of her in terms of native fields. After her troubles 
 ("The broad world rang with the maiden's name"), 
 She lives in peace 
 Upon the spot where she was born and reared ; 
 Without contamination doth she live 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 325 
 
 In quietness, without anxiety : 
 
 Beside the mountain chapel, sleeps in earth 
 
 Her new-born infant, fearless as a lamb 
 
 That, thither driven from some unsheltered place, 
 
 Rests underneath the little rock-like pile 
 
 When storms are raging. Happy are they both — 
 
 Mother and child! (VH, 320-329) 
 
 As he noticed children everywhere in city and country 
 alike, so he observed with a peculiar tenderness the graves 
 of children in the lonely churchyards of the north of Eng- 
 land. His Essays Upon Epitaphs reflect an EngHshman's in- 
 terest in the graves of the village dead. Americans who on 
 their travels do not identify England with London are im- 
 pressed by the unaffected piety of worshippers in outlying 
 parishes, who before and after vesper service walk about in 
 God's acre, keeping green the memory of departed friends 
 and relatives. There is nothing unusual or morbid in the 
 impulse that led Wordsworth to write his essays, and to 
 quote examples from memorial stones. How far he is from 
 morbidity and the melancholy of Gray or White is clear from 
 the feeling lines on his school companion at Hawkeshead, 
 who lived but to be buried in the village where he was born. 
 Wordsworth is not despondent, but his heart is touched by 
 remembrance of the boy who was one of the ''race of young 
 ones": 
 
 This Boy was taken from his mates and died 
 
 In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. 
 
 Fair is the spot, most beautiful the vale 
 
 Where he was born ; the grassy churchyard hangs 
 
 Upon a slope above the village school. 
 
 And through the churchyard when my way has led 
 
 On summer evenings, I believe that there 
 
 A long half hour together I have stood 
 
 Mute, looking at the grave in which he lies. 
 
 (V, 389-397) 
 
326 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 The custom of reading epitaphs reveals a simple sin- 
 cerity that shows in English people that fibre of genuineness 
 which Wordsworth admired and exalted in the ''statesmen" 
 of the Lake District. We have observed that Henry Kirke 
 White had interwoven the custom with the return at eve 
 of the laborer and his children, and Wordsworth, like that 
 father in White's poem, draws lessons from what he reads. 
 'Tn the obscure corner of a country church-yard I once 
 espied, half overgrown with hemlock and nettles, a very 
 small stone laid upon the ground, bearing nothing more 
 than the name of the deceased with the date of birth and 
 death, importing that it was an infant which had been born 
 one day and died the following. I know not how far the 
 Reader may be in sympathy with me; but more awful 
 thoughts of rights conferred, of hopes awakened, or re- 
 membrances stealing away or vanishing, were imparted to 
 my mind by that inscription there before my eyes than by 
 any other that it has ever been my lot to meet with upon a 
 tomb-stone." Among the epitaphs on children he quotes 
 this example : 
 
 What Christ said once He said to all, 
 Come unto Me, ye children small : 
 None shall do you any wrong, 
 For to My Kingdom you belong. 
 
 Wordsworth's genius is expressing itself with characteris- 
 tic simple beauty when he writes that a pure woman's life is 
 
 As snowdrop on an infant's grave. ^ 
 
 In a beautiful sonnet he has with unadorned simplicity 
 commemorated ancient rites observed by ''rude Biscayans" 
 in the burial of children who died in "sinless time of in- 
 
 1 Elegiac Stanzas (Addressed to Sir G. H. B. upon the death 
 of his sister-in-law), pub. 1827. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 327 
 
 fancy." ^ In the third book of The Excursion the Solitary 
 relates how he lost his ''blooming girl" and her brother, the 
 only remaining stay of his life; and the compact lines in 
 the Lucy poems likewise voice the sense of loss experienced 
 by those who are left behind. Wordsworth's meek spirit of 
 Christian love comes out tenderly in the epitaph for his son 
 Thomas (1812?). 
 
 Six months to six years added he remained 
 
 Upon this sinful earth, by sin unstained : 
 
 O blessed Lord ! whose mercy then removed 
 
 A Child whom every eye that looked on loved; 
 
 Support us, teach us calmly to resign 
 
 What we possessed, and now is wholly thine ! 
 
 II 
 
 No serious attempt seems to have been made either by 
 Wordsvv^orth or by eighteenth-century poets to connect me- 
 dieval castles and ruins with childhood. The castles and 
 abbeys of which romantic poets loved to write, did not 
 prove suitable places for children. When the earlier poets 
 felt free to leave Pope and the classicist tradition, Thomson 
 was their chief inspiration. They were too strongly drawn 
 to universal benevolence and the return to nature to be 
 deeply stirred by matters of antiquarian interest.^ Beattie 
 ignored the specifically medieval element in the ancestral 
 seat of the young Lord Hay in order to write of uni- 
 
 1 Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, 
 XXIV, "In due observance of an ancient rite." 
 
 2 J. G. Cooper's Call of Aristippus is hardly an exception. 
 Cooper attempted to heighten the child's sense of fear by having 
 him overtaken by night near a ruined abbey. Attracted by flowers, 
 he had wandered in a forest, near which he sank down to rest 
 amid the "dark horrors of the night" and far from a "fondling 
 mother's sight." Cooper localizes the spot near "Where an old 
 abbey stood." 
 
328 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 versal benevolence. Wordsworth recollected childhood 
 play within the confines of ruined abbeys and castles, but 
 showed no inclination to develop medieval elements. 
 
 As a child Wordsworth played in and about Cocker- 
 mouth Castle, Brougham Castle, and Furness Abbey. Yet 
 in all recollections he subordinates the romantic element, 
 where he is conscious of it at all, to his love of nature. 
 Cockermouth Castle is of interest to him only in so far as 
 the river Derwent reflected the shadow of the towers of that 
 ''shattered monument of feudal sway." In the Address 
 from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle the tower is a com- 
 peer stricken like himself in years. When as a child he 
 entered the dungeon, he became a "prey to soul-appalling 
 darkness," but only with the conventional result that his 
 thoughts were led to the darkness of the grave. He chased 
 the butterfly in the "green courts," or climbed the battle- 
 ments to gather flowers. This is certainly not the spirit 
 of romance. ^ 
 
 1 Lovibond's On Rebuilding Combe Neville reveals greater sym- 
 pathy with nature than with the castle background. Although his 
 attention is about equally divided between nature and the castle, 
 references to the latter are mechanical. They are hardly merged 
 with the recollection of Lovibond's youthful roamings within the 
 confines of Combe Neville, the seat of the kingmaker Warwick. 
 The wars of the roses are alluded to; gatherings of knights and 
 ladies are recalled; Warwick is spoken of as tilting in the court- 
 yard. But such thoughts are suggested by the schoolboy's reading 
 rather than by a mood induced by the castle itself. Such phrases as 
 "dread mansion" and "gothic tower" suggest more to us than was felt 
 by the youthful Lovibond. One stanza shows how unconscious he 
 was of the romantic possibilities of the castle. He sought "thy 
 awful grove," not to feel a pleasing sense of mystery or horror, 
 but to soothe his evening hours with "that best deceiver, Love." 
 
 The morbid White must have had remote sympathies with the 
 romantic gloom of castles and abbeys (Childhood). In youth he 
 retired to the "gloomy glen" to muse on lofty themes, ancient lore, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 329 
 
 Brougham Castle, "romantic" and "low-standing" by 
 the margin of a stream, served to recall how he and Dorothy 
 climbed the "darksome windings of a broken stair," and 
 "not without trembling" climbed along a "fractured" wall. 
 The trembling was not induced by fear of spirits. Instead, 
 he and Dorothy looked through a "Gothic window's open 
 space," not like Keats into fairy lands forlorn, but upon a 
 "far-stretching landscape." Or they "lay on some turret's 
 head" listening to the breeze as it lightly waved the tufts of 
 grass and harebells. Their interest was chiefly in natural 
 beauty. The castle, in spite of the mention of architectural 
 details, is nothing more than a convenient belvedere. ^ 
 
 and heroes of old. By this time the modern reader is on the 
 alert for romantic moods. White is in fact thinking of Britomart, 
 Una, and "courteous Constance." On his evening walk, as he 
 gazed up to the clouds, his fancy- 
 stately towers descried, sublimely high, 
 In Gothic grandeur frowning on the sky. 
 
 But here again the glimpse of romantic matter is fleeting, and con- 
 nected only vaguely with his reminiscences of youthful walks. 
 
 In Netley Abbey, W. Sotheby, Esq., briefly notices the senti- 
 mental attitude of his boyish days. "At day's dim close" he had 
 often stopped to meditate 
 
 where first arose 
 The pointed ruin peeping o'er the wood. 
 
 He ascribes the mood to childhood : "with life's gay dawn th' 
 illusions cease." 
 
 1 Jago's Edge Hill (1767) shows premonitions of the value of 
 romantic material. It is difficult for readers of Scott and Tenny- 
 son to realize just how much was associated in Jago's mind with 
 such romantic names as Kenilworth, Guy of Warwick, Coventry, 
 and Godiva. Such embellishments of medieval castles as the 
 moat and portcullis are treated in the enumerative style. Jago's 
 poem is topographical and has to do with the district near War- 
 
330 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 His references to ruined shrines and temples are also 
 bare of detail, as in The Prelude, when he merely notices 
 Druidic remains or recalls in passing the *'chaunted rites" 
 which daily served the shrine of ''Our Lady" on an island 
 in Lake Windermere. He seems to feel little irreverence in 
 boyish escapades among the ruins of Furness Abbey in the 
 "Vale of Nightshade, to St. Mary's honor built." He and 
 his schoolfellows whipped and spurred their horses, and flew 
 through the chantry in "uncouth race," past the "cross- 
 legged knight and the stone abbot," and out through open- 
 ings in the ruined walls. If Wordsworth does not respond 
 to the medieval relics, his spirit is moved by that "single 
 wren" that sang so sweetly in the ruined nave that the poet 
 could have lived there forever "to hear such music." The 
 emphasis is on this element of natural beauty, although he 
 seems to make a crude attempt to phrase something of 
 romantic awe, but even here in terms of nature. There 
 were faint 
 
 wick. In recalling Beaudesert, "old Montfort's lofty seat," where 
 he ranged in childhood, he was unable to merge his feeling for 
 castles with his childish experiences. 
 
 In the Ruins of Pontefract Castle (1756), Langhorne is ab- 
 sorbed in the physical danger attendant upon walking or standing 
 near ruined walls. The frightened peasant, who steps swiftly 
 by, feels for himself only the same physical fear that prompts the 
 "pale matron" to call her "heedless" children from the "threat- 
 ening wall." Neither is moved by the spirit of awe that later 
 writers connected with ruins. Joseph Warton's To Fancy contains 
 a passage conceived in the same mood : 
 
 Or to some abbey's mouldering towers, 
 Where, to avoid cold wintry showers, 
 The naked beggar shivering lies, 
 While whistling tempests round her rise, 
 And trembles lest the tottering wall 
 Should on her sleeping infants fall. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 331 
 
 Internal breezes, sobbings of the place 
 And respirations, from the roofless walls 
 The shuddering ivy dripped large drops. 
 
 (Prelude, II, 122-124) 
 
 In the use of specifically medieval elements in their in- 
 fluence on childhood, Wordsworth, therefore, shows no ad- 
 vance over previous poets. 
 
 Before he reached the stage of poetic development which 
 gave him power to phrase a vivid sense of mysterious awe, 
 felt by him as an emanation from natural objects in wood 
 or field, Wordsworth experimented with horrific elements 
 that derive from Blair, the ballads, and the German school 
 of horror. He refers in the Preface to "sickly and stupid 
 German tragedies," but was himself temporarily under the 
 sway of their methods in such a poem as The Thorn and 
 his tragedy The Borderers. He was, as Professor Win- 
 chester intimates, "influenced by the growing liking for the 
 cruder forms of romance in drama and fiction at that period. 
 Certainly some of the action and scenery of the play recall 
 the bugaboo terrors of Horace Walpole or Monk Lewis." 
 
 That Wordsworth set out in The Thorn (1798) to em- 
 phasize the horrific element is clear both from his own pre- 
 fatory remarks and from a comparison with Langhorne's 
 lines on the thorn in The Country- Justice. In the choice of 
 concrete details, Wordsworth's poem represents an extreme 
 rebound from the classicist method. His intention was to 
 make the commonplace seem unusual, the approach being 
 by way of exhibiting "some of the general laws by which 
 superstition acts upon the mind." 
 
 Langhorne's thorn is solitary, aged, and torn by winds 
 of the heath on which it stands exposed: Wordsworth's 
 thorn is "aged," "old and grey," "a wretched thing forlorn," 
 and stands "high on a mountain's highest ridge," exposed 
 
332 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 to "the stormy winter gale" that ''cuts Hke a scythe." 
 Wordsworth has all the elements of Langhorne except the 
 moonlight, which by Wordsworth is converted into the time 
 when "frosty air is keen and still." He adds to the elements 
 of the earlier poet a specific and concrete quality. Lang- 
 horne proceeds at once to the "horror" which stopped a 
 "felon in his flight." The horror is not supernatural, but 
 is the result of lack of benevolence in a community put to 
 shame by the tenderhearted felon whose sympathy is moved 
 by the plight of the new-born infant found by him near 
 the thorn and carried, in the face of personal danger, to the 
 nearest cottage. The intention of Langhorne is to depict 
 the workings of universal benevolence even in the heart of 
 a man hunted by officials of organized society. Words- 
 worth, on the other hand, crudely endeavors to motivate the 
 supernatural by reference to the height of the thorn, which is 
 Not higher than a two years' child. 
 
 He emphasizes the distorted appearance of the wind-swept 
 thorn, and takes out his measuring stick in order to report 
 that the thorn is not five yards from the mountain path. He 
 returns to what he considers the creepy style by calling at- 
 tention to 
 
 A beauteous heap, a hill of moss. 
 
 Just half a foot in height, 
 
 on which one may see "All colours that were ever seen." 
 He singles out a deep vermilion, and in the next stanza 
 speaks of "scarlet bright." 
 
 This heap of earth o'ergrown with moss, 
 
 Which close beside the Thorn you see, 
 
 So fresh in all its beauteous dyes, 
 
 Is like an infant's grave in size, 
 
 As like as like can be : 
 
 But never, never anywhere, 
 
 An infant's grave was half so fair. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 333 
 
 And when later he introduces the doleful Martha Ray, clad 
 in *'a scarlet cloak," he does so by repeating the allusion 
 to the infant's grave. She 
 
 oft there sits between the heap, 
 So like an infant's grave in size. 
 
 In the ninth stanza he again summarizes his opening lines 
 and refers once more to the "hillock like an infant's grave." 
 As if this were finally adequate suggestion of something 
 mysterious and gruesome, he enters upon the story of the 
 girl's betrayal and the connection between her child and 
 the thorn near which she often sat even in inclement 
 weather. The childhood theme is realized with the same 
 painful literalness as the poet's exact measurements. The 
 physical horrors of blood stains on the moss of the child's 
 grave are phrased with crude directness. That Words- 
 worth was consciously working in the mood of the school of 
 terror is clear from the way he incorporates graveyard 
 horrors. 
 
 Some say if to the pond you go. 
 
 And fix on it a steady view, 
 
 The shadow of a babe you trace, 
 
 A baby and a baby's face, 
 
 And that it looks at you; 
 
 Whene'er you look on it, 'tis plain 
 
 The baby looks at you again. 
 
 As if this were not sufficient, he adds that the authorities 
 who come to examine the hill of moss are frightened ofif by 
 the heaving of the sod for fifty yards around. 
 
 If the poem could be read as a travesty of the sort of 
 thing Lewis stood for, it would be interesting; but Words- 
 worth took the subject seriously, and the poem is painful 
 even to the inner circle of Wordsworthians. It is interest- 
 ing to note that the hillocks noticed in Blair's Grave include 
 one ''of a span long," the resting place of a child that ''never 
 
334 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 saw the sun." In The Excursion, Wordsworth asks his 
 reader to mark a daisied hillock "three spans long," a phrase 
 which is compared by Mr. W. Knight with an identical 
 phrase in Burger's Pfarrer's Tochter, from which Words- 
 worth's phrase may have derived. The Thorn represents 
 Wordsworth's fleeting interest in a phase of romantic poetry 
 which is not congenial to his powers.^ 
 
 He is at his best when he portrays in The Prelude, in 
 connection with reminiscences of Hawkeshead days, the 
 subtler influences that emanated from nature to teach the 
 boy the mysterious power of a presence that can not be seen 
 with the physical eye. He was one of a race of real children 
 who went tired to bed from boisterous play. The glad 
 animal spirits which made them healthy youngsters were, 
 occasionally at least, supplemented in Wordsworth, even at 
 the age of ten, by experiences of subtler origin. He wrote 
 an epic of his boyish adventures 'Vhile yet a schoolboy." It 
 was a long poem that included '*my own adventures, and the 
 scenery of the country in which I was brought up." The 
 earliest extant verses, ''written as a school exercise at 
 Hawkeshead anno aetatis 14", contain these lines : 
 
 To teach, on rapid wings, the curious soul 
 To roam from heaven to heaven, from pole to pole, 
 From thence to search the mystic cause of things 
 And follow Nature to her secret springs; 
 
 Nor less to guide the fluctuating youth 
 
 Firm in the sacred paths of moral truth. 
 
 Among the genuine boyish experiences recounted in The 
 Prelude, that of the stolen boat ride reveals his sensitive- 
 ness to the mysterious power emanating from nature. 
 
 1 A Fragment (supposed to have been found in a dark passage 
 in the Tower of London), by Miss Helen Maria Williams, is 
 equally crude in its attempt to arouse sympathy for children mur- 
 dered in the Tower. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 335 
 
 Throughout the narrative there is a solid substratum of 
 physical experience, of which he never loses sight, and out of 
 which grew naturally his sense of "huge and mighty forms" 
 that were a trouble to his dreams. 
 
 By following the natural sequence of the boy's psycho- 
 logical reactions to external phenomena, which are clearly 
 visualized, he succeeds in expressing his vivid sense of the 
 working of mysterious forces. Beyond the unobtrusive 
 allusion to his little boat as an ''elfin pinnace," he makes no 
 effort to add an element of the strange and extraordinary. 
 The boy is enjoying a ''troubled pleasure" because he rea- 
 lizes that the boat ride is "an act of stealth," but he is re- 
 sponsive to the "small circles glittering idly in the moon" 
 as he pulls lustily at the oars. To reach his chosen goal 
 "with an unswerving line," he fixed his eye on the "summit 
 of a craggy ridge" : 
 
 I dipped my oars into the silent lake, 
 
 And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat 
 
 Went heaving throug-h the water like a swan; 
 
 When, from behind that craggy steep till then 
 
 The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge, 
 
 As if with voluntary power instinct 
 
 Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, 
 
 And growing still in stature the grim shape 
 
 Towered up between me and the stars, and still, 
 
 For so it seemed, with purpose of its own 
 
 And measured motion like a living thing, 
 
 Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned. 
 
 And through the silent water stole my way 
 
 Back to the covert of the willow tree; 
 
 There in her mooring-place I left my bark, — 
 
 And through the meadows homeward went, in grave 
 
 And serious mood; but after I had seen 
 
 That spectacle, for many days, my brain 
 
 Worked with a dim and undetermined sense 
 
 Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts 
 
336 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 There hung a darkness, call it solitude 
 
 Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes 
 
 Remained, no pleasant images of trees, 
 
 Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields; 
 
 But huge and mighty forms, that do not live 
 
 Like living men, moved slow^ly through my mind 
 
 By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. 
 
 (I, 374-400) 
 
 As he looks back to this experience, Wordsworth breaks 
 into a song of thanks to the "Wisdom and Spirit of the Uni- 
 verse" which had purified his feelings and thoughts by 
 bringing him into contact with enduring things. 
 
 not in vain 
 By day or star-light thus from my first dawn 
 Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me 
 The passions that build up our human soul. 
 
 (I, 404-407) 
 
 Wordsworth's recollection of nocturnal visits to the 
 snares set by his companions is interesting in the light of 
 Blair's schoolboy in the graveyard. In Blair's Grave there 
 is no motivation of the boy's fear beyond the superstitious 
 awe commonly attributed to human beings who walk in 
 country graveyards while moon shadows are projected 
 across nettle-skirted and moss-covered stones. Blair holds 
 to simple traditions of horrid apparitions that are tall and 
 ghastly and take stand over some ''new-opened" grave. It 
 is the sort of stufif out of which were made those ballads 
 learned by country lads from their grandame at the ingle- 
 side. Blair is in fact using material that could have been 
 supplied him by almost any child in his parish in Scotland. 
 Wordsworth, on the other hand, concentrates on the ordi- 
 nary remorse which any boy would feel when alone in the 
 woods at night after having emptied the snares set by school 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 337 
 
 companions. The boy's better reason had been overpowered, 
 and he had taken the bird which was the rightful prey of 
 another. Ghosts did not pursue him. Wordsworth's art is 
 not, as in The Thorn, identified with that of the fleshly 
 school. He states the ordinary facts of the reaction of a 
 guilty boy to his awakening conscience. He does this not 
 in terms of eighteenth-century moralizing, but in phrasings 
 that, while not destroying the physical reality of his en- 
 vironment, permeate it with warning powers "of soft alarm." 
 He spiritualizes the phenomena of nature. Blair's school- 
 boy hears the sound of something purring at his heels, and 
 then runs as fast as his legs will carry him. Wordsworth 
 heard "low breathings coming after" of "undistinguishable 
 motion," and steps that were as silent as the turf they 
 trod. They are too subtle to be identified in terms of Blair's 
 traditional graymalkin "purring" at a boy's heels. 
 
 Wordsworth, then, is successful in conveying his sense 
 of the mysterious when he holds closely to naturalistic ele- 
 ments, and makes no effort to create agencies that are not in 
 harmony with the manifestations of external nature. 
 
 Where Blair is conventional in the manipulation of 
 ghostly elements, Wordsworth identifies the mysterious 
 with certain phenomena of external nature. He secures the 
 desired effect by a high suggestion of something "more" 
 than what was vouchsafed to descriptive poets. Words- 
 worth's penetrative power goes deeper than externals : a 
 yellow cowslip was "nothing more" than a yellow cowslip 
 to Peter Bell, but flowers and the phenomena of woods and 
 fields suggest higher powers to Wordsworth and give him 
 thoughts that lie too deep for tears. ^ He again and again 
 states his faith in the ministrations of nature, as in The 
 Tables Turned (1798) : 
 
 1 Compare Gray's Vicissitude. 
 
338 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 Such a process is perfectly normal, for he emphasizes ele- 
 mentary feelings ; and he accepts as a fact in his philosophy 
 that "man and nature are essentially adapted to each other." 
 
 HI 
 
 By a ''faithful adherence to the truth of nature," which 
 in Wordsworth's poetry means more than the literal external 
 facts, he awakens civilized man from the "lethargy of cus- 
 tom" by reference to powers to which any "feeling mind" 
 may awaken itself if man will but be as simple and natural 
 as a child. Wordsworth recognizes the beneficent supple- 
 menting influence of man, especially as revealed in the affec- 
 tionate teachings of a cottage mother; but he never omits 
 the influence of nature on the child mind. 
 
 poor men's children, they and they alone, 
 By their condition taught, can understand 
 The wisdom of the prayer that daily asks 
 For daily bread. A consciousness is yours 
 How feelingly religion may be learned 
 In smoky cabins, from a mother's tongue — 
 Heard while the dwelling vibrates to the din 
 Of the contiguous torrent. (Excursion, IV, 786-793) 
 
 In the light of this attitude it is only natural that when 
 Wordsworth was thinking of the problem of immortality 
 and met the little cottage girl in the area of Goodrich 
 Castle in 1793, he should see in her simple faith a true ex- 
 pression of the cottage child's spiritual instincts. He is not 
 tempted to develop the graveyard background in the mood 
 of Blair, nor does he drift into the sentimental sadness of 
 Gray. He writes steadily with his eye on the object. In 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 339 
 
 We Are Seven (1798) the cottage child has ceased to be 
 treated as one of a group. In this detached poem Words- 
 worth concentrates his attention upon her as an individual. 
 He not only notes the details of her surroundings and do- 
 mestic background, but individualizes her physically. His 
 deep sympathy is plain also in the lines which analyze the 
 probable reasons for the child's reaction to his questions. 
 Where previous poets have not gone beyond the bounds of 
 play and physical recreation, Wordsworth tries to penetrate 
 to the innermost workings of the child mind. 
 
 The untutored affection of childhood is reflected in her 
 habits, which are true to child nature in the environment in 
 which she is placed. Her implicit faith is naturally ex- 
 pressed in the simple stanza of the folk ballad. All phases 
 of Wordsworth's conception and expression are adapted to 
 the portrayal of simple child nature. ^ 
 
 Wordsworth ascribes to her all physical characteristics 
 found in connection with the traditional poetic conception 
 of idyllic cottage children, with the difference that he in- 
 dividualizes her and allows her to appear as a vital, living 
 being in the dialogue. He states her age precisely; curls 
 clustered about her head. There is just a touch of ballad 
 remoteness when he writes, in connection with her mystic 
 woodland air, that she was "wildly clad." The romantic 
 suggestion, in place of a more literal descriptive word, at 
 once removes the child from the garish light of common 
 experience, without, however, destroying physical reality. 
 Her beauty, which made the poet glad, is enhanced by eyes 
 that are "fair and very fair." 
 
 1 He may have learned from Blake something of the elemen- 
 tal effectiveness of the question and answer method, for some of 
 the lines in We Are Seven seem to echo such a question as "Where 
 are thy father and mother, say" of Blake's Chimney-Sweeper in 
 Songs of Experience. 
 
340 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Then the dialogue commences, in which the poet is 
 worsted by the little maid who will not concede that two of 
 the family have been removed by death. The first stanza, 
 in the composition of which Coleridge assisted, has pre- 
 pared the reader to sympathize with her inability to com- 
 prehend the idea of cessation of being. Wordsworth's 
 analysis of child nature reveals a new element in poetry 
 about children. Judged by the standards of creative art, 
 the canon of Wordsworth's poetry reveals no greater 
 achievement in the presentation of a cottage child. 
 
 Blake's children live out the idea of vigor and vitality 
 that can recognize no cessation of activity: Wordsworth's 
 poem is conceived with characteristic tranquillity and repose. 
 With simplicity and limpid clearness it illustrates Words- 
 worth's philosophy. Here as elsewhere in his poetry about 
 children, his interest is not like Blake's in the "childishness 
 of childhood," for Wordsworth had a ''wondering, question- 
 ing interest in the child mind," which is revealed especially 
 in IVe Are Seven and in the lines to Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 It is not necessary to justify the child psychology upon 
 which Wordsworth proceeds in We Are Seven. It is be- 
 side the point to argue about imaginary companions; or to 
 say that children do not lie when they refer to imaginary 
 playmates, but that their attitude is due to real confusion. 
 It is unnecessary to speak of their vivid sense of reality in 
 play-life, or of their failure to be conscious of the need of 
 distinguishing between intensely real play moments and the 
 world of external fact which, as Wordsworth says in th^. 
 Ode, presses upon them later with a weight heavy as frost 
 and deep almost as life. It is beside the point to consider 
 these matters, because, although Wordsworth had something 
 of the semblance of a philosophy about the relationship be- 
 tween childhood and nature, he was out of sympathy with 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 341 
 
 the scientific attitude which prompted a man to peep and 
 botanize upon his mother's grave. He intuitively accepted 
 a fact of common experience and illustrated it in the atti- 
 tude of the child who unquestioningly accepts the fact in 
 its full simplicity. 
 
 Aside from the interest which the poem has ever com- 
 manded as a perfect expression of one phase of childhood, 
 it is of interest too as an early study that foreshadows 
 Wordsworth's deep and instinctive faith in childhood as re- 
 vealed in the Ode. In We Are Seven the child is individual- 
 ized and realized as a human being at the same time that 
 Wordsworth gives expression to his faith in the child's in- 
 stinctive belief in immortality. 
 
 Even Michael falls far behind this poem, although 
 images of the infant Luke are flashed upon the reader. Luke 
 acts naturally enough, and is truly conceived as a cottage 
 child ; but the portrait lacks the full individualizing lines of 
 We Are Seven both in externalities and in moral qualities. 
 Luke is the victim of circumstances — fate, perhaps — and his 
 reactions to events are pictured chiefly in terms of his 
 father's experiences. Luke is neither morally nor physically 
 at the center of the poem. Wordsworth's sympathy and 
 analysis are centered in Michael. The expository Fenwick 
 note recognizes the fact that much of the poem turns upon 
 Michael's sheepfold, the erection of which was begun with 
 the aid of Luke. In the return at eve, Luke, who has come 
 home from the fields with his father, is not singled out. He 
 sits down with his parents to the cleanly supper-board with 
 its mess of pottage, skimmed milk, cheese, and basket "piled 
 high with oaten cakes." And in the thrifty occupations of 
 the evening hours, his activities are merged with the father's 
 in the repair of utensils or in the carding of wool. After 
 the first one hundred and fiftv lines, the child's activities 
 
342 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 are not presented In direct action, but in the recollection of 
 Michael. 
 
 The reader is gradually carried forward to the boy's 
 eighteenth year, at which time unforeseen misfortunes fell 
 upon Michael. At this point the affection for native fields 
 determines Michael's choice of alternatives, and he decides 
 to send his son into the great city in preference to selling a 
 portion of his ''patrimonial fields." In the considerations 
 that lead up to Michael's decision, Luke plays no active part. 
 He is not pictured as in any way actively guiding or reliev- 
 ing the moral anguish of his father. Michael alone makes 
 the decision. 
 
 Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel ; the land 
 Shall not go from us, and it shall be free; 
 We shall possess it, free as is the wind 
 That passes over it. 
 
 It would be shallow to derive the pathetic scenes at the 
 close of Michael from sentimental poetry of the previous 
 century. The sentimental tradition may be felt in certain 
 lines of The Brothers, but in the simple affection of Michael 
 we feel the heart-beats of a father and mother who must 
 part with their only child, and who, with dread, consign him 
 to the keeping of a distant relative in a wicked city. Even 
 at the close of the poem, after the fatal blow has fallen 
 upon him, and he realizes that his son is lost to him, Michael 
 does not lose heart, but resolves at the age of eighty-four 
 to climb the heights once more. It was not sentiment that 
 prompted the laying of the first stone at the sheepfold which 
 was never completed, although the old man spent many an 
 hour there after Luke had left him. To Michael the laying 
 of the stone was a covenant between father and son. 
 
 Wordsworth's exaltation of cottage children involves a 
 fuller and more affectionate notice of the English cottage 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 343 
 
 than is found in poetry of the eighteenth century. On the 
 basis of his poetry it is possible to reconstruct the background 
 and activities of cottage children. He notices how cottage 
 windows blaze through the twilight in the frosty season ; 
 he gives details of the peat fire; he notices the frugal fare 
 of cottage children. 
 
 And three fair Children, plentifully fed 
 Though simply, from their little household farm. 
 
 {Excursion, VII, 162-163) 
 
 He depicts the sad home coming of Margaret, Goody Blake 
 gathering faggots, and like Thomson loves to muse by the 
 half-kitchen, half-parlor fire in his cottage. The cottage 
 and cottage children lie at the heart of his conception of life. 
 After the disillusionment following closely upon Eng- 
 land's declaration of war against the France which for him 
 still stood for the spirit of freedom, and after his loss of 
 faith in France itself because of Revolutionary excesses, he 
 was wooed back to nature and cottage simplicity by Dorothy. 
 Up to the time ''Britain opposed the Liberties of France" he 
 recognized a continuous development from childhood to 
 manhood : 
 
 In brief, a Child of Nature, as at first. 
 
 Diffusing only those affections wider 
 
 That from the cradle had grown up with me, 
 
 And loving, in no other way than light 
 
 Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong. 
 
 ( Prelude, XI, 168-172) 
 
 In the period of readjustment at Racedown (1795-1797) 
 his love of cottage life slowly reasserted itself, at Alfoxden 
 (1797-1798) he wrote his homely lyrical ballads, and while 
 in Germany composed beautiful lines about the unidentified 
 cottage girl in the Lucy poems. Upon his return from 
 Germany, when he instinctively turned in 1799 toward his 
 
344 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 native fields among the Lakes, he settled at Dove Cottage, 
 which is today the shrine peculiarly associated with his name. 
 In The Recluse he acknowledged that many other nooks of 
 earth have the attraction of Grasmere, but nowhere else 
 
 can be found 
 The one sensation that is here; 'tis here, 
 Here as it found its way into my heart 
 In childhood. 
 
 In The Prelude, he recalled at length his own simple ex- 
 periences among cottagers of the Lake District, from which 
 he had been absent less than a decade. 
 
 Those poems which are most valued today were con- 
 ceived in harmony with the moods and ideals to which he 
 gave full expression in The Prelude. He saw in children 
 the manifestations which had won him back to nature and 
 self after the moral crisis of the nineties. With childhood 
 he associated all that is beautiful and ennobling in life. In 
 childhood man lives closest to nature, and it was his firm 
 belief that England could be saved only if Englishmen would 
 live simply in communion with nature. His interest in nature 
 and children was not that of an esthete; he was a humani- 
 tarian who inherited the ethical interest of the benevolists 
 from Thomson to Southey. 
 
 After his meeting with Michael Beaupuy, whose con- 
 versation had stirred him to the depths, nature yielded first 
 place to man. While in France, he had been moved to com- 
 passion by examples of suffering among the cottage poor, 
 for the amelioration of whose condition such men as Beau- 
 puy were striving. Wordsworth's sturdy democratic spirit 
 resented class privilege with its resultant abuses, which were 
 manifest in monarchical France. Awakened to social con- 
 sciousness, he was keenly alive to suffering, and characteris- 
 tically made his point by way of childhood. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 345 
 
 When we chanced 
 One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl, 
 Who crept along fitting her languid gait 
 Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord 
 Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane 
 Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands 
 Was busy knitting in a heartless mood 
 Of solitude, and at the sight my friend 
 In agitation said, " 'Tis against that 
 That we are fighting," I with him believed 
 That a benignant spirit was abroad 
 Which might not be withstood, that poverty 
 Abject as this would in a little time 
 Be found no more, that we should see the earth 
 Unthwarted in her wish to recompense 
 The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil, 
 All institutes forever blotted out 
 That legalised exclusion, empty pomp 
 Abolished, sensual state and cruel power. 
 Whether by edict of the one or few ; 
 And finally, as sum and crown of all. 
 Should see the people having a strong hand 
 In framing their own laws ; whence better days 
 To all mankind. {Prelude, IX, 509-532) 
 
 In those early days of Revolutionary enthusiasm he still 
 beheved in the fallacious doctrine that mankind could be re- 
 formed by legislation. This attitude resulted in temporary 
 disillusionment and the moral crisis from which he emerged 
 with a sound conviction that the highest hopes for man lay 
 in the individual; and because the child is father of the 
 man, in the child. By way of the child, then, especially in 
 its domestic relations, and in the duties of the state toward 
 children in elementary education, he delivered his message. 
 
 While Dorothy was winning him back to himself at 
 Racedown, where he did not find a sturdy and independent 
 peasantry such as is reflected in Michael, he saw what pained 
 him and was in keeping with the background of Guilt and 
 
346 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Sorrow; or Incidents upon Salisbury Plain (i 791 -1794). 
 The widow with her children in Guilt and Sorrow is effec- 
 tively dramatized, and his indignation is aroused by the 
 father who had been provoked by a ''simple freak of thought- 
 less play" to beat his child cruelly. In the critical years of 
 his life, when the poet in him lay in the balance, Words- 
 worth was stirred by the humanitarian spirit that had per- 
 vaded English poetry for over half a century before 1795. 
 
 In keeping with his strong local feeling and his centri- 
 petal nature, which loved to soar but not to roam, he as- 
 sociated heaven and home as kindred points. In fact, his 
 deep feeling for childhood implies a high conception of 
 home virtues. Like the poets before him, he exalted moth- 
 erhood and the place of the mother with her children in the 
 home. He would have accepted the old English proverb 
 that a good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters, and 
 certainly wrote in the spirit of Lord Langdale, who said, *'If 
 the world were put into one scale, and my mother into the 
 other, the world would kick the beam." 
 
 His is not a blind devotion. He saw his mother clearly 
 and truly as a human mother. He is like the benevolist poets 
 in that he could not follow naturalistic philosophy in all its 
 implications. Wordsworth had read Shaftesbury, and re- 
 marked that he was ''An author, at present unjustly depre- 
 ciated." He was influenced by Rousseau and the return to 
 nature, and his humanitarian thesis involved much of what 
 in the native English tradition had been developed on the 
 assumption of natural goodness. He wrote in The Prelude 
 that evil is but a shade of good, a statement which re- 
 flects the doctrines of sentimental comedy and domestic 
 tragedy. He did not, however, logically apply those na- 
 turalistic implications involved in the exaltation of primitive 
 life as represented, for instance, by the American Indian. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 347 
 
 Although not expressing himself in the crude manner of 
 Day, he yet harbored no illusions about primeval purity in 
 savafres. In the Hnes to his infant Dora he draws a com- 
 
 o 
 
 parison unfavorable to Indian life. In the course of his 
 musings he reveals the essentials of his attitude toward 
 motherhood by recognizing the value of culture and the 
 graces of civilization. In the Indian mother 
 
 the maternal sympathy itself, 
 Though strong, is, in the main, a joyless tie 
 Of naked instinct, wound about the heart. 
 
 (Address to my Infant Daughter, Dora) 
 
 In the exaltation of his mother he thought of more than 
 creature comforts, which occupy so large a place in Cow- 
 per's recollection. The essentially spiritual and freedom- 
 loving Wordsworth praised his mother for her wise self- 
 restraint in allowing a higher freedom than could be en- 
 joyed by children who were subjected to meddling and 
 "improvement." 
 
 Motherhood is at the center of two of his most vital 
 passages: one in The Prelude when he recollects his own 
 mother and her influence on his childhood ; and the other in 
 The Excursion when he makes a plea for the natural rights 
 of children who are deprived of a mother's influence because 
 an industrial age usurps her time and saps her energy. 
 
 Although Cowper's poem on his mother excels in finality 
 of expression, Wordsworth's lines are of the highest value 
 in a study taking into account the social as well as the 
 literary influences that mould a poet and determine his 
 attitude toward childhood. 'Wordsworth responded obvi- 
 ously to the new forces that had as their aim the ameliora- 
 tion of childhood. His attitude towards his mother and 
 her care of him reveals his fundamental understanding of 
 child welfare in what is on the whole the modern concep- 
 tion. 
 
348 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Although not published until 1850, the year of his death, 
 The Prelude, or The Grozvth of a Poet's Mind; an Autobio- 
 graphical Poem, was begun at the opening of the year 1799, 
 and was completed in the summer of 1805. During these 
 years, moral tales and systems of education, both native 
 and imported, were still in vogue. Among the really val- 
 uable English schemes that helped to point the way to a 
 system of popular education in 1878 were those of Lan- 
 caster and Bell, sponsored in 1798, and flourishing side by 
 side. The real difference between these systems was that 
 Lancaster proceeded on a wholly secular basis, while Bell 
 espoused the education of children in religion as well, and 
 finally received the organized support of the "National So- 
 ciety for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the 
 Principles of the Established Church throughout England 
 and Wales." Side by side with these genuine and, for 
 their time, successful efforts, and in many cases antedat- 
 ing them, were the amateur systems which had sprung 
 up as the result of the Rousseau impetus in Germany 
 and France. These were rapidly taken up in England by 
 the wniters of moral tales, and by amateur authors on educa- 
 tion, and were transplanted in translations like those of 
 Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Holcroft. 
 
 In view of Wordsworth's pronunciamento on the evil 
 results of industry in its interference with the inborn right 
 of children to a free, open-air childhood, and in view of his 
 attitude on the native nobility of nature's gentlemen as rep-* 
 resented in the ideal peasant who enjoyed true freedom, it 
 was to be expected that he would be out of sympathy with 
 cramping and cramming systems that failed to catch the 
 spirit of freedom essential to his philosophy of life with 
 respect to children. Although he was not specifically a 
 follower of Rousseau, his doctrine of the minimum of in 
 terference, restraint, and guidance is in practical guise some- 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 349 
 
 thing very much Hke Rousseau's behef that with the child 
 one should not gain' time but lose it. Like Rousseau, 
 Wordsworth was not concerned with making a man of the 
 child as soon as possible; he believed that the child should 
 live the days of childhood for what they are rather than, 
 as in the institutional system, wholly from a regard for 
 what they promise for the future. Like Rousseau, then, 
 and Blake, he recognized the individuality of the period of 
 childhood, and respected it. The child was to be allowed to 
 roam at will in books, but especially in nature, which is 
 the breath of God. There he would experience true life. 
 (Excursion, II, 28ff.) 
 
 Wordsworth has been frequently misunderstood as con- 
 demning, or at least belittling, the influence of books. As 
 a matter of fact, he was with Dorothy a persistent reader 
 of English poetry. Although recognizing the superior in- 
 fluence of nature, he was led to take an unfavorable atti- 
 tude toward books only in so far as they were misused in 
 the schools and amateur systems of home education. It is 
 necessary for a true conception to realize that he does not 
 belittle books, to which he is more than just. He believes 
 that they have profoundly influenced the heart of man, 
 ''whether by native prose of numerous verse," from the lofty 
 notes of Homer to the ''low and wren-like wafblings" and 
 ballads for common folk. Although he has many times 
 spoken of the value and delights of reading, perhaps the 
 most significant passage occurs in The Prelude. 
 
 'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works, 
 A.nd of the men that framed them, whether known, 
 Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves, 
 That I should here assert their rights, attest 
 Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce 
 ^ Their benediction ; speak of them as Powers 
 
 For ever to be hallowed. (V, 213-219) 
 
350 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Wordsworth's objection is wholly to the confinement 
 of children to books and systems of reading that exclude 
 enjoyment and delight in the works of nature. He asks how 
 he and Coleridge would have developed into poets if in 
 lieu of wandering at will through vales and over open 
 ground 
 
 We had been followed, hourly watched, and noosed. 
 
 Each in his several melancholy walk 
 
 Stringed like a poor man's heifer at its feed, 
 
 Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude. (V, 238-241) 
 
 His scorn and contempt for the model child are ex- 
 pressed at length. lEarly trained to worship seemliness and 
 convention, this child is never known to quarrel. Words- 
 worth condemns the sickly humanitarianism of the child 
 that with ''gifts bubbles o'er as generous as a fountain." 
 Such a child is never selfish, and no childish pleasure can 
 ever tempt him. The wandering beggars ''propagate his 
 name," and dumb creatures find him "tender as a nun." 
 
 To enhance the wonder, see 
 How arch his notices, how nice his sense 
 Of the ridiculous; not blind is he 
 To the broad follies of the licensed world, 
 Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd. 
 And can read lectures upon innocence. 
 
 (V, 309-314) 
 
 The products of fashionable systems were far from repre- 
 senting the ideal freedom which was advocated by Rousseau 
 and Wordsworth, and which Wordsworth in his abnormal 
 love of freedom in his youth carried so far that his hatred 
 of restraint caused him to "turn from regulations even of 
 my own." The cramming process then in vogue produced 
 infant prodigies who in his eyes were little monstrosities. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 351 
 
 A miracle of scientific lore, 
 
 Ships he can guide across the pathless sea, 
 
 And tell you all their cunning; he can read 
 
 The inside of the earth, and spell the stars; 
 
 He knows the policies of foreign lands; 
 
 Can string you names of districts, cities, towns. 
 
 The whole world over, tight as beads of dew 
 
 Upon a gossamer thread ; he sifts, he weighs ; 
 
 All things are put to question ; he must live 
 
 Knowing that he grows wiser every day 
 
 Or else not live at all, and seeing too 
 
 Each little drop of wisdom as it falls 
 
 Into the dimpling cistern of his heart. (V, 315-327) 
 
 Wordsworth's heart goes out to the child, who is not to 
 be blamed : 
 
 For this unnatural growth the trainer blame, 
 Pity the tree. 
 
 Wordsworth could not endure violence to child nature, 
 and like Blake rebelled against interference with the sanc- 
 tity of childhood. The child could have no freedom in one 
 of the systems devised for his education : 
 
 For, ever as a thought of purer birth 
 
 Rises to lead him toward a better clime, 
 
 Some intermeddler still is on the watch 
 
 To drive him back, and pound him, like a stray, 
 
 Within the pinfold of his own conceit. (V, 332-336) 
 
 Meanwhile Mother Earth is grieved to find that all the 
 playthings she had designed for her child are unthought 
 of; the flowers in their woodland beds mourn the absence 
 of children, and the banks of rivers are lonely without 
 roving youngsters. 
 
 What would we not sacrifice for a glimpse of Words- 
 worth, Coleridge, and Lamb (for they had grown up in the 
 days of chap books and Newberry's volumes, before moral 
 
352 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 tales had cast their blight) about a table discussing the 
 pernicious effects of misdirected efforts in contemporary 
 education. They scorned ''These mighty workmen of our 
 later age" who have the skill to manage books and things 
 so as to make them act on infant minds ''as surely as the sun 
 Deals with a flower." These people have set up as guides 
 and wardens of men's minds, and are sages who "in their 
 prescience would control All accidents," and confine men 
 to the road which they have built. Wordsworth, in despair, 
 wishes to know if their presumption will ever allow them 
 to learn that a wiser spirit is at work for man. Words- 
 worth and his friends must often have exchanged reminis- 
 cences of those happier early days for children when the 
 curse of encyclopedic knowledge had not operated. He 
 longed for the days of imaginative, freedom-giving fairy 
 tales and stories of wonder. 
 
 Oh ! give us once again the wishing-cap 
 Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat 
 Of Jack the Giant-Killer, Robin Hood, 
 And Sabra in the forest with St. George! 
 
 (V, 341-344) 
 
 He does not hold back the reason for his preference : 
 
 The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap 
 One precious gain, that he forgets himself. 
 
 In this connection he paid the memorable tribute to his 
 "honoured Mother," who died when he was only eight. He 
 feels that to "break upon the sabbath of her rest" in con- 
 nection with his condemnation of systems is almost blas- 
 phemous. He would not link her memory "With any 
 thought that looks at others' blame." She typifies the es- 
 sence of that beneficent influence which shielded him from 
 subjection to amateur systems and novelties in education. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 353 
 
 She respected the character of her children. She did not, 
 Hke many mothers at the close of the century, presumptu- 
 ously arrogate the power of close supervision. 
 
 Nor did by habit of her thoughts mistrust 
 
 Our nature, but had virtual faith that He 
 
 Who fills the mother's breast with innocent milk, 
 
 Doth also for our nobler part provide, 
 
 Under His great correction and control, 
 
 As innocent instincts, and as innocent food; 
 
 Or draws for minds that are left free to trust 
 
 In the simplicities of opening life 
 
 Sweet honey out of spurned or dreaded weeds. 
 
 This was her creed, and therefore she was pure 
 
 From anxious fear of error or mishap. 
 
 And evil, overweeningly so called ; 
 
 Was not puffed up by false unnatural hopes, 
 
 Nor selfish with unnecessary cares, 
 
 Nor with impatience from the season asked 
 
 More than its timely produce ; rather loved 
 
 The hours for what they are, than from regard 
 
 Glanced on their promises in restless pride. 
 
 Such was she — not from faculties more strong 
 
 Than others have, but from the times, perhaps, 
 
 And spot in which she lived, and through a grace 
 
 Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness, 
 
 A heart that found benignity and hope, 
 
 Being itself benign. (V, 270-293) 
 
 As in Blake's conception, all knowledge should be de- 
 Hght, which in Wordsworth's interpretation is to be found 
 in the presence of enduring things in nature. He exalts his 
 mother for giving the early freedom that brought him into 
 the presence of nature, where infant sensibility might be 
 augmented and sustained in freedom, the ''great birthright 
 of our being." ^ 
 
 1 Victor Hugo looked back to his mother with affection be- 
 cause she had rescued him from the irksome confinement of the 
 grammar school. 
 
354 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Wordsworth recognizes the same beneficent freedom 
 from restraint in his second mother, the school at Hawkes- 
 head, where he was not closely held to routine. He notes 
 that the scholars might have fed upon a fatter soil of arts 
 and letters, but says, "be that forgiven," for they had gained 
 knowledge without loss of power. At Cambridge he found 
 himself ill prepared for ''sedentary peace" and academic dis- 
 cipline. He never read for honors, and in choosing a walk- 
 ing tour through the Alps during his third summer vaca- 
 tion was guilty of a "hardy slight" of college studies and 
 their rewards. 
 
 For I, bred up mid Nature's luxuries, 
 
 Was a spoiled child, and rambling like the wind, 
 
 As I had done in daily intercourse 
 
 With those crystalline rivers, solemn heights, 
 
 And mountains, ranging like a fowl of the air, 
 
 I was ill-tutored for captivity. (Ill, 351-356) 
 
 To him, confinement to courses stood for instruction, while 
 freedom for play of the senses and sensibilities in fields and 
 woods stood for education. 
 
 Although not definitely correlating play and study in 
 the curriculum, Wordsworth did insist on the right to 
 freedom from supervision and control in order to liberate 
 the child for the natural guidance of woods and streams. 
 It is significant that he named the two first books of The 
 Prelude not "School" but "School-time." In his poetry, 
 play is in fact raised to the level of an educational force. 
 By play he means rougher sports such as are chronicled in 
 The Prelude; but he means also such subtler experiences 
 as he reported in the snaring of the woodcock, climbing to 
 the raven's nest, and skating on Esthwaite. In his explicit 
 recognition of the value of play he crystallizes the thought 
 of Lovibond, Bruce, and Mickle, who recognized play as a 
 factor in character building. Unlike them, Wordsworth 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 355 
 
 has developed his attitude in expository passages attendant 
 upon poetic representation of his autobiographical exper- 
 iences. Gay as a boy in Devonshire, and Langhorne in the 
 Lake District, had certainly enjoyed many of the sports re- 
 corded by Wordsworth. The time, however, had not been 
 ripe for the definite statement of an attitude holding that 
 children were not uselessly employed in the changes of sea- 
 sonal exercise or play which the year brings "in his de- 
 lightful round." Wordsworth's modern attitude is clearly 
 phrased in the Duddon sonnet in which after a typical en- 
 comium on streams as companions for children, he writes. 
 
 Nor have I tracked their course for scanty gains ; 
 They taught me random cares and truant joys, 
 That shield from mischief and preserve from stains 
 Vague minds, while men are growing out of boys. 
 
 (The River Duddon, 26) 
 
 This is in harmony with his belief that the child's mind 
 should not show too many traces of the handiwork of man, 
 whose meddling and systematizing would straighten the 
 windings of the Duddon and the Derwent. 
 
 Wordsworth stands for natural development with a 
 minimum of interference. Modern study of child psycho- 
 logy indicates that his conception was not merely idealistic. 
 Scientific observation has made clear the need of broad 
 sense experience for the young child, because, being es- 
 sentially sensory and motor, his life is made up largely of 
 percepts. He responds with chameleon rapidity to his 
 environment; every object appeals to his senses; there is 
 no mixture or confusion of motives to prevent him from 
 trying to realize the physical concomitants that awaken and 
 appeal to his emotions. The most widely accepted authori- 
 ty holds that the mature man's proficiency in the manipula- 
 tion of more complex mental states is directly dependent 
 
356 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 on the richness, clearness, and breadth of the child's early 
 sense perceptions. This is the attitude of Wordsworth in 
 the passages which lovingly recall rosy-cheeked school- 
 boys, the oldest of whom was no taller than a counsellor's 
 bag — who listened to the cuckoo and felt the presence of 
 an unknown power. Wordsworth pitied the boy Coleridge, 
 who was compelled to spend his school days "in the depths 
 of the huge city" where he was restricted in his view of na- 
 ture to the "leaded roof of that wide edifice, thy school and 
 home." 
 
 His most extended exposition occurs in the fervid lines 
 of The Prelude in which he calls that babe blessed who is 
 nursed in its mother's arms and "with his soul Drinks in 
 the feelings of his Mother's eye." 
 
 For him, in one dear Presence, there exists 
 
 A virtue which irradiates and exalts 
 
 Objects through widest intercourse of sense. 
 
 (II, 238-240) 
 
 Such a child is not bewildered or depressed. The hand of 
 love beautifies all natural objects to which as a babe he is 
 too weak to do more than point. Having drunk from 
 love's purest earthly fount of tenderness, such a child clear- 
 ly feels pity for whatever is unsightly or bears the marks 
 of violence and harm. Such a babe, growing up under 
 such influences, is not an ideal : 
 
 Emphatically such a Being lives. 
 
 Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail. 
 
 An inmate of this active universe! 
 
 For feeling has to him imparted power 
 
 That through the growing faculties of sense 
 
 Doth like an agent of the one great Mind 
 
 Create, creator and receiver both, 
 
 Working but in alliance with the works 
 
 Which it beholds. (II, 252-260) 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 357 
 
 This first true spirit of man's life, clearly manifest in 
 the natural child, is abated or suppressed by convention, 
 "By uniform control of after years." The loss which he 
 indicates in The Prelude, and bemoans in the Ode, repre- 
 sents a true experience that can be explained by modern 
 psychology. It teaches that in place of the child's indis- 
 criminate observation, the man tends to focalize his interest 
 along certain definite lines. The man thereby loses his 
 childish spontaneous joy in the consciously controlled ef- 
 forts and responses of maturity. In order, therefore, that 
 the child may enjoy his heaven-sent harmony with God's 
 creation as fully as possible, Wordsworth would eliminate 
 much of the outside interference of instruction which 
 falsely goes under the name of education. ^ He is con- 
 vinced at heart, and makes the point again and again. 
 
 How little those formalities, to which 
 
 With overweening trust alone we give 
 
 The name of Education, have to do 
 
 With real feeling and just sense. (XIII, 169-172) 
 
 His philosophy of child delight and happiness, which is 
 essentially that of Blake also, but fully and consciously de- 
 veloped, is explained by his temperamental love and ex- 
 altation of simple dalesmen. In them the tutorings of na- 
 ture, untrammeled by convention, have preserved a child- 
 like spirit of love and reverence for natural objects. These 
 are the teachings of The Prelude. 
 
 1 Compare his lines on Cambridge. The Prelude, Book II, 11. 
 591-608, but especially : 
 
 And blind Authority beating with his staff 
 The child that might have led him. 
 
358 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 In The Excursion (1815) the earlier, supple, naturalistic 
 attitude, still close to Shaftesbury and Rousseau in spirit 
 at least, has lost some of its freshness and charm in the 
 matter-of-fact atmosphere that permeates the long exposi- 
 tory passages on questions of public interest. 
 
 Even before the completion of The Prelude, at the time 
 when his thoughts were occupied with recollections of his 
 own childhood, he often assumed a didactic manner that is 
 remotely suggestive of the moral tales. The didactic Anec- 
 dote for Fathers had been published in 1798; but during 
 the year 1802, when he composed many beautiful lines on 
 childhood, including the well-known "Rainbow," he also 
 wrote Foresight. This little poem is delightfully con- 
 ceived, but mechanically expressed. He had approached 
 too closely to the bald didacticism of the moral-tale writers 
 to follow his inspiration freely. The subtitle, "the charge 
 of a child to his younger companion," which was later dis- 
 carded, indicates the didactic spirit in which he was work- 
 ing. The subject matter is botanical, and the moral smacks, 
 if not of what Leigh Hunt called ''sordid and merely plod- 
 ding morals," of the thrift and reward morality. ^ It dif- 
 fers from moral tales in that there is a certain indefinable 
 
 1 Compare Dorothy's Loving and Liking (1832) : 
 Yet, listen, Child — I would not preach; 
 But only give some plain directions 
 To guide your speech and your affections. 
 
 See also The Poet's Dream and The Longest Day. 
 
 Compare To a Young Lady on her Birth-Day, Being the First 
 of April, anonymously printed in A Classical Arrangement of Fu- 
 gitive Poetry, vol. XV, p. 49: 
 
 Let others write for bye-designs, 
 
 I seek some moral in my lines, 
 
 Which whosoever reads must bear, 
 
 Or great, or learned, or young, or fair. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 359 
 
 charm in the dialogue of the children who are out in the 
 fields in early spring. 
 
 With his customary dependence on Dorothy's diary, he 
 capitalized her regret over having plucked a strawberry- 
 blossom in January. He was stimulated by her remark 
 that as a child she would never have pulled a strawberry- 
 blossom. That very day he came in with the poem, known 
 in the household as "Children Gathering Flowers." The 
 charge of the elder child is dramatically conceived. 
 
 That is a work of waste and ruin — 
 
 Do as Charles and I are doing! 
 
 Strawberry-blossoms, one and all, 
 
 We must spare them — ^here are many : 
 
 Look at it — the flower is small, 
 
 Small and low, though fair as any. 
 
 The child's insistence on the difference in age reveals 
 Wordsworth's ability and willingness to weave a common 
 trait of child nature into his poem : 
 
 Do not touch it ! summers two 
 I am older, Anne, than you. 
 
 By avoiding the negative suggestion, Wordsworth con- 
 ceived the elder child as a true monitor who centers the 
 younger child's attention on other flowers. 
 
 Pull the primrose, sister Anne ! 
 
 Pull as many as you can. 
 
 — Here are daisies, take your fill ; 
 
 Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower : 
 
 Of the lofty daffodil 
 
 Make your bed, or make your bower; 
 
 Fill your lap, and fill your bosom; 
 
 Only spare the strawberry-blossom ! 
 
 Then he enters upon a train of thought that leads to the 
 moral of the poem. 
 
360 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 God has given a kindlier power 
 
 To the favoured srtrawberry-flo\ver. 
 
 Hither soon as spring is fled 
 
 You and Charles and I will walk ; 
 
 Lurking berries, ripe and red, 
 
 Then will hang on every stalk, 
 
 Each within its leafy bower; 
 
 And for that promise spare the flower ! 
 
 Nature alone, then, is not sufficient. Her tutorings 
 need ito be supplemented. By the time he published The 
 Excursion, he had awakened to the need of popular edu- 
 cation. His vision of a system of state education for chil- 
 dren marks him as a pioneer poet among those men of 
 letters who appreciated the need of universal education. He 
 appealed to church and state to realize their responsibilities 
 in the education of children. His extended notice of edu- 
 cational problems, and the obvious sincerity of his inten- 
 tion, must have had an appreciable effect on the ever-widen- 
 ing circle of his readers. 
 
 Elementary education in England was dependent upon 
 local initiative, and was supplemented by the philanthropical 
 work of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowl- 
 edge, and by the Sunday School. There is no doubt that 
 these efforts, together with the monitorial systems of Lan- 
 caster and Bell, paved the way for universal education. But 
 the state had uniformly neglected its responsibilities, and it 
 was not until eighteen years after Wordsworth had called 
 attention to the needs of elementary education that the first 
 Parliamentary grant was made in 1833. The grant of 
 twenty thousand pounds, designed solely to aid in building 
 schoolhouses, had to be passed as a supply bill, which was 
 not required to go to the House of Lords, where as pro- 
 gressive legislation it would have been killed. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 361 
 
 In the course of vital discussion which is recorded in 
 the eighth book of The Excursion, the Wanderer touched 
 upon the failure of state and church to realize their duties 
 in the education of children. He took his illustration from 
 the Lake District, where children were more favorably 
 situated than in most counties of England. He drew an 
 unpleasant picture of the stiff-legged, awkward ploughboy 
 under whose shaggy brow are set sluggish and lustreless 
 eyes 
 
 Proclaiming boldly that they never drew 
 
 A look or motion of intelligence 
 
 From infant-conning of the Christ-cross-row, 
 
 Or puzzling through a primer, line by line, 
 
 Till perfect mastery crown the pains at last. 
 
 {Excursion, VIII, 411-415) 
 
 The state had neglected him, and what can now penetrate 
 the crust in which his soul sleeps "like a caterpillar sheathed 
 in ice." He has not partaken of the equal rights that are 
 boasted in his country's name. These lines indicate clearly 
 that Wordsworth was not blinded by his conception of an 
 ideal peasantry, but noticed the problem of popular educa- 
 tion as faced by Hannah More in the dreadful conditions at 
 rural Cheddar. 
 
 The pHght of children was, however, worse in cities, 
 where an inventive age had converted at "social Industry's 
 command," peaceful hamlets or tracts of wood into teem- 
 ing industrial centers. Here the abodes of men are irre- 
 gularly massed as thickly as trees in a forest: 
 
 crazy huts 
 And tottering hovels, whence do issue forth 
 A ragged Offspring. (VIII, 346-348) 
 
 Here the "smoke of unremitting fires Hangs permanent." 
 Wordsworth writes of the "deformities of crowded life." 
 In place of the ancient, peaceful starry night that gave re- 
 
362 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 pose to man, he sees an ''unnatural light" that shines from 
 a huge many-windowed factory where labor never ceases. 
 In place of the curfew, man hears the harsh bell that 
 punctually calls to unceasing toil. As the day laborers are 
 disgorged, the night shift enters to the rumbling sound of 
 ''dizzy wheels" : 
 
 Men, maidens, youths, 
 Mother and little children, boys and girls. 
 Enter, and each the wonted task resumes 
 Within this temple, where is offered up 
 To Gain, the master idol of the realm, 
 Perpetual sacrifice. (VIII, 180-185) 
 
 Wordsworth does not rest in a sentimental contrast be- 
 tween the worship in this temple and that of his ancestors in 
 vast cathedral or conventual church where tapers burned 
 day and night in honor of God alone. He does not stop with 
 a condemnation of the profane rites at the altar of gain, or 
 the desecration of streams turned into "instruments of 
 bane" to tempt those from simplicity whose ancestors drank 
 pure water from them. !He turns to face a real problem 
 which arose with the factory life that broke up the home. 
 In the neighborhood of factories, homes are empty from 
 morning to evening. 
 
 The Mother left alone, — no helping hand 
 
 To rock the cradle of her peevish babe ; 
 
 No daughters round her, busy at the wheel, 
 
 Or in dispatch of each day's little growth 
 
 Of household occupation ; no nice arts 
 
 Of needle-work; no bustle at the fire. 
 
 Where once the dinner was prepared with pride. 
 
 (VIII, 267-273) 
 
 Nothing is left of domestic bliss to speed the day or cheer 
 the mind. Wordsworth has phrased here an outHne of the 
 problem which enlightened men and women are still hoping 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 363 
 
 to solve. Wordsworth's interest is altogether focused on 
 children who are deprived of their birthright because econo- 
 mists contend that the state thrives by child labor — ' an 
 "unfeeling thought." ^ He calls the doctrine "false as 
 monstrous." He would banish wisdom that forces upon the 
 child, because of "premature necessity," work that shuts 
 off development of mind and heart, and makes "its very 
 spring a season of decay" by "long captivity" and "inward 
 chains" unworthy of a native Briton, and imposed "with- 
 out his own consent." 
 
 In Humanity (1829) Wordsworth is impatient with 
 those who defend "qualified oppression" on the "hollow 
 plea of recompense." Such arguments are 
 
 Fetched widi cupidity from heartless schools, 
 
 That to an Idol, falsely called "the Wealth 
 
 Of Nations," sacrifice a People's health, 
 
 Body and mind and soul; a thirst so keen 
 
 Is ever urging on the vast machine 
 
 Of sleepless Labour, 'mid whose dizzy wheels 
 
 The Power least prized is that which thinks and feels. 
 
 Wordsworth had not lost his early enthusiasm, and ad- 
 hered to his high vision for the welfare of man as the in- 
 heritor of that happiness which comes only through living in 
 harmony with nature. The late poem To the Utilitarians 
 (1833) is characterized by the same spirit which informs his 
 plea for imagination in the education and reading matter of 
 children. 
 
 Avaunt this economic rage ! 
 What would it bring ?^ — an iron age, 
 Where Fact with heartless search explored 
 Shall be Imagination's Lord, 
 
 1 Compare the remark imputed to Pitt, who is said to have 
 dismissed a delegation of complaining factory owners with the 
 words, "Take the children." 
 
364 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 And sway with absolute control 
 The god-like Functions of the Soul. 
 Not thus can knowledge elevate 
 Our Nature from her fallen state. 
 With sober Reason Faith unites 
 To vindicate the ideal rights 
 Of human-kind — the tone agreeing 
 Of objects with internal seeing, 
 Of efforts with the end of Being. 
 
 His objection is not to industry itself. But Wordsworth 
 would have men go back to the cottage industry which kept 
 children affectionately under the eye of parents. The 
 simple life of cottagers was ever in his thoughts. From his 
 poetry may be culled passages that would reconstruct a 
 complete picture of spinning and weaving in the cottage. 
 The Brothers (1800) provides such details: 
 
 Upon the stone 
 His wife sate near him, teasing matted wool. 
 While, from the twin cards toothed with glittering wire, 
 He fed the spindle of his youngest child. 
 Who, in the open air, with due accord 
 Of busy hands and back-and-forward steps, 
 Her large round wheel was turning. 1 
 
 His heart is in the lines from one of the Lucy poems ( 1799) : 
 
 And she I cherished turned her wheel 
 Beside an English fire. 
 
 This attitude Hes at the root of his faith in the simple life 
 as the hope of man. When he observes the terrible condi- 
 tions of child labor at industrial centers, he cries out against 
 those who seek to justify their preference for these condi- 
 tions in place of the traditional home industry that had been 
 carried on in a happy England. 
 
 1 Compare The Excursion (Book I, 1. 890) : 'The little child 
 who sate to turn the wheel." 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 365 
 
 The Father, if perchance he still retain 
 
 His old employments, goes to field or wood, 
 
 No longer led or followed by the Sons ; 
 
 Idlers perchance they were, — but in his sight ; 
 
 Breathing fresh air, and treading the green earth; 
 
 'Till their short holiday of childhood ceased. 
 
 Ne'er to return ! That birthright now is lost. 
 
 Economists will tell you that the State 
 
 Thrives by the forfeiture — unfeeling thought. 
 
 And false as monstrous! Can the mother thrive 
 
 By the destruction of her innocent sons 
 
 In whom a premature necessity 
 
 Blocks out the forms of nature, preconsumes 
 
 The reason, famishes the heart, shuts up 
 
 The infant Being in itself, and makes 
 
 Its very spring a season of decay! (VIII, 276-291) 
 
 Wordsworth was justified in his condemnation of in- 
 dustrial abuses involving the evils of child labor. The First 
 Factory Act of 1802, the "Health and Morals of Apprentice 
 Act," was designed to protect children who were herded 
 into woolen mills. ^ It limited work to twelve hours a day, 
 stipulated that night work was to cease after 1804, and con- 
 tained certain provisions about elementary education in the 
 three R's. Whitewash alone, however, would not atone for 
 unsanitary conditions, and the limitation of work to twelve 
 hours merely reflects the terrible conditions under which 
 children labored. It was not until after The Excursion 
 that a more extensive act prohibited employment of chil- 
 dren under nine. This act again justifies Wordsworth's de- 
 nunciation of conditions as they existed during the com- 
 position of The Prelude and The Excursion. In spite of the 
 earlier Act, a Royal Commission as late as 1833 found chil- 
 dren working fifteen hours a day. 
 
 1 The word child is not used in the Act of 1802; it does appear 
 in the Act of 1833. 
 
366 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 James Grahame's The Birds of Scotland contains affect- 
 ing lines on the abuse of children in industry. Like the 
 benevolists, he pities the caged bird, and in a sympathetic 
 mood recalls that the bird's fate is no more pitiable than 
 that of children confined in factories. If Grahame does not 
 express himself with the power of Wordsworth, his lines 
 nevertheless give a vivid picture of what one of Words- 
 worth's contemporaries saw in cities. 
 
 Nor is thy lot more hard than that which they 
 (Poor linnets!) prove in many a storied pile. ^ 
 They see the light, 'tis true they see, and know 
 That light for them is but an implement 
 Of toil. In summer with the sun they rise 
 To toil: nor does the shortened winter day 
 Their toil abridge : for, ere the cock's first crow, 
 Aroused to toil, they lift their heavy eyes, 
 And force their childish limbs to rise and toil. 
 
 Grahame had also a vision of traditional home industry, 
 which had not robbed the child of freedom. 
 
 And while the winter night, by cottage fire, 
 Is spent in homebred industry, relieved 
 By harmless glee, or tale of witch, or ghost, 
 So dreadful that the housewife's listening wheel 
 Suspends its hum, their toil protracted lasts. 
 
 No joys, no sports have they: what little time. 
 The fragment of an hour, can be retrenched 
 From labour, is devoted to a shew, 
 A boasted boon, of what the public gives — 
 Instruction. Viewing all around the bliss 
 Of liberty, they feel its loss the more. 
 
 Children bound to industrial slavery see birds flitting past 
 the factory windows, 
 
 But no sweet note by them is heard, all lost, 
 Extinguished in the noise that ceaseless stuns the ear. 
 
 ^ Cotton factories. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 367 
 
 As with Crabbe, ''stern Truth" led Grahame to a reali- 
 zation of the deg^radation of man through heartless exploi- 
 tation of the child. Enamoured of the beauty of nature and 
 the joy it gives man, he saw nothing but vice festering in 
 smoky cities. 
 
 If such be the effects of that sad system, 
 
 Which, in the face of nature's law, would wring 
 
 Gain from the labouring hands of playful children; 
 
 If such the effects, where worth and sense direct 
 
 The living, intellectual machines. 
 
 What must not follow, when the power is lodged 
 
 With senseless, sordid, heartless avarice? 
 
 Wordsworth held that wherever the boy may turn, he 
 is still a prisoner in the industrial system, and can not 
 breathe God's free air that ought to be fanning his temples 
 in woods and by the side of streams. 
 
 His raiment, whitened o'er with cotton flakes 
 Or locks of wool, announces whence he comes. 
 Creeping his gait and cowering, his lip pale, 
 His respiration quick and audible. (VIII. 309-312) 
 
 State and church have neglected their duties toward the 
 industrial child as toward the ploughboy of remote districts. 
 The poet can scarcely fancy that a gleam could break 
 from the languid eyes of the factory boy, or a blush mantle 
 on his cheek. This is not the human being who in child- 
 hood should enjoy liberty of mind and body, and the thrill 
 of vivid physical sensation along the blood, to make him 
 ''Sublime from present purity and joy." {Excursion VIII, 
 320.) What can the state hope from manhood reared on 
 such foundations? The Recluse exclaims that there is no 
 hope for such children or for tens of thousands who are suf- 
 fering a wrong as deep. From such as these, when they 
 have been discarded by the factories, are recruited the abject 
 
368 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 human shapes who in rag^s issue from tottering hovels or 
 meet the traveler on the skirts of furze-clad commons to 
 whine and stretch out their hands for coins (VIII, 364). 
 
 No one in England takes delight in this industrial op- 
 pression ; the (bondage goes by no high-sounding name. Yet 
 women who have children of their own, behold this without 
 compassion, yea, even with praise. The little group in the 
 parsonage who have been discussing this grave problem, 
 turn their thoughts to the happier theme of the "blooming 
 boys" who come from a fishing expedition after having 
 spent a few short hours as "thriving prisoners of the 
 village-school." (IX, 260.) Their lot is a happy one. 
 When they are grown men they will look back on child- 
 hood, and say that justice was shown them "alike to body 
 and to mind." Then Wordsworth states his conception of 
 popular education. 
 
 O for the coming of that glorious time 
 
 When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth 
 
 And best protection, this imperial Realm, 
 
 Wihile she exacts allegiance, shall admit 
 
 An obligation, on her part, to teach 
 
 Them who are born to serve her and obey; 
 
 Binding herself by statute to secure 
 
 For all the children whom her soil maintains 
 
 The rudiments of letters, and inform 
 
 The mind with moral and religious truth, 
 
 Both understood and practised, — so that none, 
 
 However destitute, be left to droop 
 
 By timely culture unsustained. (IX, 293-305) 
 
 The lisping babe proclaims this inherent right to the pro- 
 tection of its innocence ; and the rude boy, "having overpast 
 the sinless age," who is on mischief bent and turns the "god- 
 like faculty of speech To impious use," thereby makes 
 known the need of education. It is fruitlessly announced; 
 but it mounts like a prayer "to reach the State's parental 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 369 
 
 ear." England will listen to the prayer if she is not un- 
 feelingly devoid of a mother's heart. 
 
 Wordsworth then phrases a message to be heeded in 
 our days as well as in the days after the Revolution and 
 during the ferment before the Reform Bill. As he looks 
 abroad on the continent of Europe, he sees long-reverenced 
 laws and customs a'bolished, and territory spHt like Polar 
 fields of ice rent by the wind. Discontent takes obnoxious 
 shapes, that may overthrow law and order even in ''these 
 fair Isles." With keen insight he observes that the forces 
 which blindly aim to subvert institutions would be thwarted 
 if ignorance that breeds dark discontent, and runs into wild 
 disorder, were removed by education. Education is no 
 more than a prudent caution which requires that the whole 
 people should be taught and trained so that "black resolve" 
 may be rooted out, and virtuous habits take its place. He 
 has faith that the voice of English lawgivers, sounding 
 "From out the bosom of these troubled times," will work 
 this general good and that England will "complete her 
 glorious destiny." In those days she will behold in her- 
 self "change wide, and deep, and silently performed," arising 
 
 from the pains 
 And faithful care of unambitious schools 
 Instructing simple childhood's ready ear. 
 
 (IX, 394-396) 
 
 Since the moral crisis which had swept away his hopes 
 for a regeneration of society through legislation, he had 
 worked gradually toward the conception which sees in the 
 education of the child the hope of the future. In the high 
 vision of a society humanised the world over through edu- 
 cation of the individual, he scornfully brushes aside as 
 groundless the gloomy speculations of the Malthusians, who 
 fear overpopulation. 
 
370 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 With such foundations laid, avaunt the fear 
 Of numbers crowded on their native soil, 
 To the prevention of all healthful growth 
 Through mutual injury! Rather in the law 
 Of increase and the mandate from above 
 Rejoice! (IX, 363-368) 
 
 At the same time, although he does not like Berkeley turn 
 his back on the old world, Wordsworth finds that the new 
 world is necessary for a realization of his ideal. As bees 
 divide in swarming time and find a new abode, so English- 
 men will find new homes beyond the seas. 
 
 So the wide waters, open to the power, 
 
 The will, the instincts, and appointed needs 
 
 Of Britain, do invite her to cast off 
 
 Her swarms, and in succession send them forth; 
 
 Bound to establish new communities 
 
 On every shore whose aspect favours hope 
 
 Of bold adventure ; promising to skill 
 
 And perseverance their deserved reward. 
 * 
 
 Earth's universal frame shall feel the effect; 
 
 Even till the smallest habitable rock. 
 
 Beaten by lonely billows, hear the songs 
 
 Of humanised society; and bloom 
 
 With civil arts, that shall breathe forth their fragrance, 
 
 A grateful tribute to all-ruling Heaven. (IX, 375-391) 
 
 On the highways of England, Wordsworth had often 
 observed the direct evil effects of child labor. It is an 
 historical fact that children, because of their size, were 
 peculiarly adapted for work at certain types of machines, 
 so that the tradition of child labor very early became es- 
 tablished. Ruthless parish officers, against whom Lang- 
 horne and Cowper inveighed, paid manufacturers five 
 pounds a head for children taken off their hands, to be 
 worked from the age of five, as in the Stockport hat trade, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 371 
 
 fourteen hours in the twenty-four. After these poor children 
 had literally outgrown their usefulness, they were heartless- 
 ly turned loose upon the community without having learned 
 a useful occupation. Wordsworth had observed the effects 
 of this method, and his plan for universal education was de- 
 signed to eliminate the helplessness of such children, who 
 without education inevitably became beggars or criminals. 
 
 like the vagrants of the gipsy tribe, 
 These, bred to little pleasure in themselves, 
 Are profitless to others. (VIII, 389-391) 
 
 Three poems composed in 1802 reflect his humanitarian 
 interest in children on the highways. Beggars and its se- 
 quel are delightful literary studies of vagrants; the poems 
 represent careful observation of the rapidly changing moods 
 of children. The vitality and care-free nature of these 
 "joyous vagrants" who in the "twinkling of an eye" could 
 change their interest from butterflies to begging, fascinated 
 him. Nevertheless they stirred in him subtle misgivings 
 for their future. They met him in a genial hour when all 
 nature breathed happiness. Therefore his pessimism is 
 tempered with a sunny optimism that struggles to give him 
 hope. 
 
 Kind Spirits ! may we not believe 
 
 That they, so happy and so fair 
 
 Through your sweet influence, and the care 
 
 Of pitying Heaven, at least were free 
 
 From touch of deadly injury? 
 
 Destined, whate'er their earthly doom, 
 
 For mercy and immortal bloom? 
 
 In Sabbath Walk, Grahame is likewise hopeful, and 
 breathes prayers of thanks because toilers in factories may 
 on the Lord's day walk by thousands in fields and meadows. 
 It soothes his heart to see children of toilworn city dwellers 
 
372 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 pull promiscuously weeds and flowers which "proudly" in 
 their parent's breast ''they smiling fix." This is a new sit- 
 uation in English poetry. It is pleasant to come upon chil- 
 dren of the industrial class at play in the open fields, and 
 enjoying what poets earher in the century had observed only 
 among cottage children in idyllic surroundings. Grahame's 
 lines ring true and show direct observation especially in 
 the failure of city-bred children to discriminate between 
 weed and flower. 
 
 A study of Wordsworth's literary treatment of the hu- 
 manitarian aspects of childhood may well close with a notice 
 of Alice Fell; or Poverty (1802), which is important also 
 as an illustration of literary tendencies. In earlier poetry, 
 especially in that of Swift, Shenstone, and Cowper, children 
 are found jeering in chorus at travellers on the highway. 
 A sound with a different import followed the chaise oc- 
 cupied by Mr. Grahame of Glasgow, brother of the poet 
 James Grahame. The incident made such a deep impres- 
 sion on this "man of ardent humanity," who was a helper 
 of Clarkson, that he requested Wordsworth to put it into 
 verse "for humanity's sake." 
 
 Wordsworth need not have been ashamed of the simple 
 ballad of a child's mishap on the king's highway. It would 
 have been better for his standing as a poet had he omitted 
 Peter Bell, the abuser of animals, from the editions of 1820 
 to 1832. The simple story of Alice Fell, the orphan girl, 
 whose cloak had been caught in the wheel of Mr. Grahame's 
 chaise, on the back of which she had climbed, must have 
 made an appeal even in the days when small critics were 
 ridiculing the simplicity of Wordsworth's verse. His sym- 
 pathy is clearly with the sobbing child who could only choke 
 out the words "my cloak." He emphasizes the humanitarian 
 traits of the charitable passengers : they left sufficient money 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 373 
 
 with the innkeeper to buy a cloak of "duffil gray." Words- 
 worth was attracted to the child who could not be consoled 
 for the loss of her coat ; weatherbeaten as it was, it had 
 fended her against cold and rain. A child under such cir- 
 cumstances is capaWe of but one thought; and true to 
 child nature, Wordsworth represents her as unconsolable 
 throughout the journey to Durham. 
 
 Alice Fell represents the extreme rebound from the gen- 
 eralized attitude towardsWMTdren. It is a detached poem 
 on childhood, and it illustrates the fusion of concrete in- 
 dividuahzing details with the humanitarian element. His 
 insistence on accuracy of detail led him not only to give the 
 child's name, but also to identify the city toward which she 
 was riding. He wrote of her with a fine feeling that infuses 
 his lines with the warmth and glow of humanity. The in- 
 sistence on details is reflected in Lamb's letter written at the 
 time when Wordsworth was thinking of revising the poem, 
 possibly with an eye to pleasing his critics : "I am glad that 
 you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I would 
 not have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon 
 the stript shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all 
 their malice; I would not have given 'em a red cloak to 
 save their souls." 
 
 Gay wrote with artistic detachment about slum children ; 
 Blake had the little chimney sweep voice a bitter protest 
 against social conditions that oppressed city children ; Crabbe 
 laid bare with photographic realism the environment of 
 children in filthy hovels. Wordsworth combined all these 
 elements. He depicted the suffering and degradation of 
 children in industry; he protested against the philosophy 
 which sought to justify child labor; in concrete details he 
 truthfully and convincingly set forth the conditions against 
 which he protested. But Wordsworth added an element 
 
374 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 not found in Gay, Blake, or Crabbe. He incorporated a 
 definite program of reform that is more liberal than that 
 of the House of Indus4;ry. With deep insight into the 
 powers of nature and the faculties of man, he offered 
 practical suggestions for a measurable realization of his 
 dreams of a happy state of childhood. His faith in the 
 sanctity of childhood, and his unshakable belief in the 
 natural rig-ht of every child to enjoy the birthright of free- 
 dom, led him to a solution that is still being tested in the 
 common schools of England and America. 
 
 IV 
 
 Wordsworth's most exalted conception of childhood is 
 found in the Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollec- 
 tions of Early Childhood (1803-1806). The Ode is the 
 glory of his poetry. It is also the crown of one hundred 
 years of poetic treatment of childhood. He wrote of his con 
 templated master poem, which was never completed, and of 
 which The Prelude and The Excursion form only a part, in 
 terms of a cathedral, in relation to which his shorter poems 
 stand as chantries and chapels. In this conception the in- 
 comparable Ode is worthy of the position of the Lady 
 Chapel. Professor Knight, who took the poem out of its 
 chronological position and placed it at the close of Words- 
 worth's collected works, considered it ''the greatest of 
 Wordsworth's poems, and that to which all others lead up." 
 
 The Ode is the summation not only of Wordsworth's 
 philosophy (which found its base in childhood), but also of 
 the attitude toward childhood reflected in those poets of the 
 eighteenth century who have been noticed in this study. It 
 is a final complete expression of the essence of those phases 
 which are vital to the naturalistic interpretation. It is the 
 natural and inevitable outgrowth of tendencies that had 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 375 
 
 become focused in Wordsworth during the years in which 
 the Ode was composed. It reveals the profoundest and 
 richest expression of Wordsworth's faith in the unsulHed 
 purity of the child's intuitions. 
 
 The first four stanzas were composed in 1803, and the 
 remainder of the poem perhaps just before or immediately 
 after the completion of The Prelude. Wordsworth wrote, 
 "Two years at least passed between the writing of the first 
 four stanzas and the remaining part." It was completed in 
 1806 and published in 1807. The Ode was conceived, then, 
 in those years when his mind was occupied with recollec- 
 tion of his childhood during the composition of his auto- 
 biographical poem. 
 
 There were certain events of a domestic nature which al- 
 so centered his attention on childhood and immortality at this 
 time. During the month of August, 1802, William and 
 Dorothy visited Calais, where he walked on Calais sands 
 with his daughter, who is the child of the sonnet, "It is a 
 beauteous evening, calm and free." The concluding lines 
 state his faith in the divine element in children : 
 
 Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, 
 If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year ; 
 And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 
 God being with thee when we know it not. 
 
 In October, 1802, Mary Hutchinson, with whom he had 
 attended Anne Birkett's infant school at Penrith in 1777, 
 became his wife. In 1803, the year in which the Ode was 
 begun, his son John was born ; and in 1804 his daughter 
 Dora. In February, 1805, his favorite brother John lost 
 his life in the wreck of his ship. The poet's thoughts had 
 since 1798 been occupied with childhood in relation to the 
 soul life of man, and the death of his brother, whose loss 
 
376 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 moved him deeply, centered his thoughts on the problem of 
 immortality. The first four stanzas (1803) of the Ode are 
 in the mood of The Prelude. -When he took up the Ode 
 again in 1805, he began with the well-known fifth stanza 
 which adds the element not to be found in eighteenth-cen- 
 tury poetry on the recollection of early childhood. He 
 explains the divinity of childhood by proclaiming the con- 
 tinuity of existence.^ Wordsworth more than half be- 
 lieved in this in spite of his palliative remarks addressed to 
 orthodox readers in the Fenwick note: ''But let us bear in 
 mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, 
 there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man 
 presents an analogy in its favour. Accordingly, a pre- 
 existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many 
 nations." 
 
 In view of his high conception of the natural rights of 
 children and the glory of childhood, it is not surprising that 
 Wordsworth should have looked upon the child as an oracle 
 of God newly come from his maker. It was in fact in- 
 evitable that he should do this, for to postulate a previous 
 state of existence is but to carry one step farther the affec- 
 tionate recollection of childhood in native fields. In The 
 Prelude and The Excursion he holds in the main to the child 
 living among men, and makes a plea for the natural rights 
 of the child. In the Ode he gives an interpretation of those 
 powers upon which the naturalistic conception may be based. 
 He answers the question, *'Why is the child capable of 
 greater joy than man, and why should man reverence child- 
 
 1 Although Beattie has written beautiful lines on the innocence 
 and purity of children, he seems to have had no idea of a pre- 
 existent state. In the Ode to Hope he writes : 
 When first on Childhood's eager gaze 
 Life's varied landscape, stretched immense around, 
 Starts out of night profound. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 377 
 
 hood ?" In the course of his solution of this mystery, Words- 
 worth has touched upon every motive of the theme of child- 
 hood noticed during the previous century. His solution may 
 have been suggested by Platonic philosophy or by Vaughan.^ 
 Whatever the source of his inspiration, it was inevitable in 
 the development of the naturalistic conception of innate 
 goodness, that a poet should face the problem of finding the 
 reason for the greater purity and happiness of children. 
 
 The earliest poetry in the tradition that leads to the Ode, 
 reveals how the poet turned instinctively to cottage children. 
 Thomas Warton had pictured in The Hamlet a sunny land- 
 scape peopled by care-free cottage children. Akenside and 
 Bruce affectionately recalled their own childhood in the 
 presence of nature ; and in the revised version of his poem, 
 Akenside is definitely suggestive of the cadence and rhythm 
 
 1 Plato's Phaedo and Phaedrus, Henry Vaughan's The Re- 
 treate, Corruption, and The World, and Thomas Traherne's Wonder, 
 offer parallels to Wordsworth's Ode in so far as they also adopt 
 the doctrine of pre-existence. There are, however, in each instance, 
 differences in application. An eighteenth -century anonymous poem 
 Pre-Existence A Poem in Imitation of Milton refers to the Platonic 
 conception of ideas. With Spenser's description of the "Garden of 
 Adonis" in the Faerie Queene Wordsworth must have been familiar, 
 as he and Dorothy were persistent readers of Spenser. Professor 
 E. Hershey Sneath states that the reference to Plato in the Fenwick 
 note "hardly warrants us in saying that he borrowed his doctrine 
 from Plato. The roots of the Poet's conviction seem to have been 
 imbedded in the subsoil of his trance-experiences of childhood, 
 which gave him the consciousness of a world above, and more real 
 than the natural world of sense ... in trying to interpret this 
 experience to himself, and then to others, so far as it related to 
 pre-existence, he found his conviction sanctioned by Plato. But 
 the conviction itself appears ultimately to have had its origin in 
 these unique experiences of childhood and youth." — Wordsworth, 
 Poet of Nature and Poet of Man, by E. Hershey Sneath, Ginn and 
 Company, 1912, p. 217. 
 
378 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 of Wordsworth's most exalted recollections of a childhood 
 influenced by mountains, forests, and streams. Beattie's 
 Minstrel in the same decade depicts an individual child who 
 responds sensitively to subtle influences emanating from 
 external nature. In fact, Dorothy recognized points of 
 likeness between Beattie's ideal "natural" boy and her 
 brother William. Whether in the person of a Lavina or 
 Edwin, or in the childhood of Bruce or Akenside, the child 
 is at the center of naturalistic poetry. Naturalistic poetry 
 reversed the methods of poets like Prior, who in their pre- 
 occupation with the institutional child looked forward im- 
 patiently to manhood or womanhood. The romantic poets, 
 in place of looking to man for a realization of their hopes, 
 asked man to look back to childhood as the ideal state: to 
 realize his highest hopes, man must become again a child. 
 The element which stimulated poets to a new interest in 
 children, and which added novelty to the mystical exaltation 
 of the child by Christ, they found in Shaftesbury's philo- 
 sophy that identified the good and the beautiful. 
 
 They did not feel it necessary to go to the noble savage to 
 find natural instincts expressed with primitive clearness ; 
 here was the child fresh from the hands of nature, and 
 living instinctively in harmony with the laws of nature. 
 Bruce, Akenside, and Lovibond not only lovingly recalled 
 childhood as the beautiful season of life, when God was im- 
 manent and the sole guiding force, but Lovibond exalted the 
 child by holding him up as a model for men in their relation 
 to created beings in the realm of external nature. In their 
 childhood, and then only, these poets had been in full har- 
 mony with the spirit of love, which permeates the universe, 
 and for a recognition of which Langhorne pleaded in The 
 Country- Justice. The days of childhood not only were 
 those of true happiness, but it was then that ''Life's morning 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 379 
 
 radiance had not left the hills" ; it was in those early years 
 of simple childhood that ''Nature and those rustic powers" 
 revealed a "light" that is seldom beheld by the grown man. 
 Like Blake, the poets of this school scorned unaided 
 reason, not like Keats on purely esthetic grounds, but be- 
 cause reason alone will not help man to penetrate the mys- 
 teries of life. These are revealed, in their estimation, most 
 fully in the primitive intuitions of the child, because he is 
 closest to his maker. Wordsworth expresses this in his 
 sonnet to Mrs. Southey (Miscellaneous Sonnets, XXXVI, 
 
 1837) : 
 
 delegated Spirits comfort fetch 
 To Her from heights that Reason may not win. 
 Like Children, She is privileged to hold 
 Divine Communion; both do live and move. 
 Whate'er to Shallow Faith their ways unfold, 
 Inly illumined by Heaven's pitying love. 
 
 But this spirit of love, manifest in the child, is soon lost 
 in the man : 
 
 Love pitying innocence, not long to last, 
 In them. 
 
 Wordsworth is not toying in the Ode. He crystallizes 
 the conception of the poets before his time by speaking of 
 childhood in terms of faith and religion. In this way he 
 interprets the reverence for childhood implied in the natural- 
 istic attitude. The earlier poets emphasize the cares and 
 glooms of age. Wordsworth, however, is interested in what 
 survives in man from his childhood. In one of his latest 
 highly inspired poems, the evening voluntary Composed 
 Upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty 
 (1818), he is stirred with the fervor characteristic of his 
 earlier effusions. Once again he writes of common ob- 
 jects in a strain of exalted emotion that recalls the mood of 
 Tintern Abbey and the Ode itself. 
 
380 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Such hues from their celestial Urn 
 
 Were wont to stream before mine eye, 
 
 Where'er it wandered in the morn 
 
 Of blissful infancy. 
 
 This glimpse of glory, why renewed? 
 
 Nay, rather speak with gratitude ; 
 
 For, if a vestige of those gleams 
 
 Survived, 'twas only in my dreams. 
 
 Dread Power ! whom peace and calmness serve 
 
 No less than Nature's threatening voice, 
 
 If aught unworthy be my choice. 
 
 From THEE if I would swerve; 
 
 Oh, let Thy grace remind me of the light 
 
 Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored; 
 
 Which, at this moment, on my waking sight 
 
 Appears to shine, by miracle restored; 
 
 My soul, though yet confined to earth, 
 
 Rejoices in a second birth! 
 
 He is here thinking of those "first-born affections" that are 
 clearly evident in the ''gleams" vouchsafed to the child but 
 lost to the man. In Maternal Grief (1810) he writes: 
 
 The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale 
 
 Of Infancy, but still did breathe the air 
 
 That sanctifies its confines, and partook 
 
 Reflected beams of that celestial light 
 
 To all the Little-ones on sinful earth 
 
 Not unvouchsafed — a light that warmed and cheered 
 
 Those several qualities of heart and mind 
 
 Which, in her own blest nature, rooted deep, 
 
 Daily before the Mother's watchful eye. 
 
 And not hers only, their peculiar charms 
 
 Unfolded. 
 
 Wordsworth's high seriousness has transmuted the 
 cruder ore of the eigfhteenth century. While writing of 
 the soul in Night Thoughts (Book VI), Young, whose ar- 
 gument leads him to despise life, could only see in the "tow- 
 ering talents, and terrestrial aims" of a genius, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 381 
 
 as thrown from her high sphere, 
 The glorious fragments of a soul immortal, 
 With rubbish mixt, and glittering in the dust. 
 
 Mackenzie exalted childhood in Pursuits of Happiness: 
 See fresh from nature's hand, unfettered youth. 
 
 But he was able to express his sense of loss only in the con- 
 ventional manner : 
 
 But soon, too soon, the airy fabrics fall, 
 And servile Reason lacqueys Interest's call: 
 Now Caution creeps where Virtue stalked before, 
 And cons the battered page of Prudence o'er. 
 
 The following lines from Beattie's Ode to Hope are 
 typical of the best expression given before Wordsworth to 
 the sense of something lost : 
 
 Ye days, that balmy influence shed, 
 
 When sweet childhood, ever sprightly, 
 
 In paths of pleasure sported lightly, 
 
 Whither, ah, whither, are ye fled? 
 
 Ye cherub train, that brought him on his way, 
 
 O, leave him not midst tumult and dismay. 
 
 In his indomitable optimism, Thomson, although ex- 
 ternal, is close to Wordsworth. Thomson realizes a dififer- 
 ence between age and youth, but is not moved to melancholy 
 musings : 
 
 Bid the morn of youth 
 
 Rise to new light, and beam afresh the days 
 
 Of innocence, simplicity, and truth; 
 
 To cares estranged, and manhood's thorny ways : 
 
 What transport, to retrace our boyish plays. 
 
 Our easy bliss, when each thing joy supplied; 
 
 The woods, the mountains, and the warbling maze 
 
 Of the wild brooks! (Castle of Indolence, Canto I) 
 
 Gray's recollection of his ^boyhood days at Eton is at 
 times premonitory of the Ode in mood and phrasing, al- 
 
382 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 though Gray like other eighteenth-century poets is not con- 
 cerned in the same sense as Wordsworth with the spiritual 
 relationship between child and nature. 
 
 Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade, 
 
 Ah fields beloved in vain, 
 Where once my careless childhood strayed, 
 
 A stranger yet to pain! 
 I feel the gales, that from ye blow, 
 A momentary bliss bestow, 
 
 As waving fresh their gladsome wing 
 My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
 And redolent of joy and youth, 
 
 To breathe a second spring. 
 
 If certain similarities are evident, the differences are 
 also obvious. The earlier poets felt the emotion which 
 prompted Wordsworth, but they are less sure and power- 
 ful in expression because they hold to physical aspects. 
 The mood, moreover, has not been correlated with all the 
 experiences of the poet's life. Wordsworth's highly de- 
 veloped local feeling, which was physical at bottom to be 
 sure, and which attached itself to objects familiar from in- 
 fancy, served, nevertheless, frequently to stir recollections 
 of a subtler nature. As a result, the backward look is the 
 mainspring of his poetic activities; recollection lies at the 
 root of his being. When expounding his philosophy of 
 the simple life, he is sooner or later sure to anchor his most 
 inspired thoughts in childhood, and especially in the spiritual 
 gleam that came to the child in the moments of his most 
 intense delight in nature. 
 
 He was fully conscious of the important place he had 
 assigned to the child as the chief factor in his carefully 
 wrought philosophy. In the twelfth book of The Prelude 
 he exclaims : 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 383 
 
 Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth 
 Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see 
 In simple childhood something of the base 
 On which thy greatness stands. 
 * 
 
 The days gone by 
 Return upon me almost from the dawn 
 Of life: The hiding-places of man's power 
 Open. (XII, 272-280) 
 
 The earlier poets have not expressed themselves with the 
 same fullness, because, being precursors of Blake and 
 Wordsworth, they did not realize all the implications of 
 their attitude toward childhood. Wordsworth, on the other 
 hand, had deliberately and by gradual stages evolved a phi- 
 losophy in which childhood is the fundamental consideration. 
 His lines reveal the power which comes with a full reali- 
 zation that the child is at the center of his philosophy. ^ In 
 The Prelude he has written of childhood in terms of sanc- 
 tification : 
 
 Our childhood sits, 
 
 Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne 
 
 That hath more power than all the elements. 
 
 I guess not what this tells of Being past, 
 
 Nor what it augurs of the life to come; 
 
 But so it is. (V, 507-512) 
 
 He employs the language of religion to reflect the sacred- 
 
 ness of childhood. 
 
 Ah ! why in age 
 Do we revert so fondly to the walks 
 Of childhood — ^but that there the Soul discerns 
 The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired 
 
 ^Wordsworth, according to the Wordsworth Coivcordance, 
 has used the following words in their different forms : child, over 
 four hundred times; hahe and hahy, over one hundred times; infant, 
 over one hundred and twenty-five times; girl, fifty times; and hoy, 
 over two hundred and fifty times. 
 
384 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Of her own native vigour; thence can hear 
 Reverberations; and a choral song, 
 Commingling with the incense that ascends, 
 Undaunted, toward the imperishable heavens, 
 From her own lonely altar? (Excursion, IX, 36-44) 
 
 Although specific indebtedness is not meant to be sug- 
 gested, the extent to which Wordsworth is the recipient of 
 influences at work for a century is evident in the way the 
 Ode brings together and fuses into one majestic conception 
 of childhood the vocabulary and imagery which may be 
 found scattered throughout eighteenth-century poetry deal- 
 ing with childhood. Where parallels exist he has converted 
 the earlier imagery into something rich and strange. Where 
 poets had often inclined to matter-of-fact statement, 
 Wordsworth's lines reveal power and 'beauty that come only 
 with imaginative realization. (The transmutation is like 
 that in the closing lines of the beautiful tribute To a Young 
 Lady. In prose and poetry of the eighteenith century there 
 are innumerable references to Lapland, which seems to 
 have had a fascination for the age ; but the references with 
 which Wordsworth must have been familiar from his read- 
 ing are colorless and uninspired. With a master poet's 
 sure sense of values he penetrates to the innermost beauty of 
 the reference and emotionally fuses it with his promises for 
 the old age of a mother of children : 
 
 an old age serene and bright, 
 And lovely as a Lapland night. 
 Shall lead thee to thy grave. 
 
 Although the poem Pre-Existence (A Poem in Imitation 
 of Milton) does not touch upon childhood, it is important 
 as constituting a possible link between Wordsworth's in- 
 terest in childhood and his doctrine of a pre-existent state. 
 Wordsworth was well read in the poetry of the eighteenth 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 385 
 
 century, and it is not at all improbable that he was ac- 
 quainted with this poem. ^ 
 
 Pre-Existence recognizes a previous life of the soul. 
 The anonymous poet changed the Miltonic conception so 
 that the fallen angels are permanently enclosed in Hell. 
 God passed judgment also on angels who, though they had 
 joined in sedition, had since sued for "clemency and grace." 
 These angels were condemned to live as human beings on 
 the earth, where they are not, however, allowed to possess 
 the faculties of their divine state. Beneath chaos sits Silence, 
 from an urn in whose hands flows Lethe. 
 
 Hither compelled, each soul must drink long draughts 
 
 Of those forgetful streams, till forms within, 
 
 And all the great ideas fade and die : 
 
 For if vast thought should play about a mind 
 
 Inclosed in flesh, and dragging cumbrous life, 
 
 Fluttering and beating in the mournful cage, 
 
 It soon would break its gates and wing away: 
 
 'Tis therefore my decree, the soul return 
 
 Naked from off this beach, and perfect blank, ~ 
 
 To visit the new world; and straight to feel 
 
 Itself, in crude consistence closely shut, 
 
 The dreadful monument of just revenge; 
 
 Immured by heaven's own hand, and placed erect 
 
 On fleeting matter, all imprisoned round 
 
 With walls of clay: th' aetherial mould shall bear 
 
 The chain of members, deafened with an ear, 
 
 Blinded by eyes, and manacled in hands. 
 
 Here anger, vast ambition, and disdain, 
 
 And all the haughty movements, rise and fall, 
 
 As storms of neighboring atoms tear the soul; 
 
 ^ Wordsworth owned a set of Bell's volumes of collected 
 poetry. 
 
 2 Wordsworth protests against this view in the Ode. 
 
386 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 And hope, and love, and all the calmer turns 
 Of easy hours, in their gay gilded shapes, 
 With sudden run, skim o'er deluded minds, 
 As matter leads the dance. . . . 
 
 As men they will vainly strive to appease their longings, be- 
 cause their souls will not be free 
 
 till all in death 
 Shall vanish, and the prisoner, now enlarged, 
 Regains the flaming borders of the sky. 
 
 It seems, however, that the poet has allowed an obscure 
 sense of a higher life to Hnger, but only as a torment to 
 the clay-enclosed soul. 
 
 JUDGMENT, blinded by delusive SENSE, 
 
 Contracted through the cranny of an eye. 
 
 Shoots up faint languid beams, to that dark seat. 
 
 Wherein the soul, bereaved of native fire. 
 
 Sits intricate, in misty clouds obscured. 
 
 Even from itself concealed, and there presides 
 
 O'er jarring images with Reason's sway, 
 
 Which by his ordering more confounds their form . . . 
 
 The more he strives t' appease, the more he feels 
 
 The struggling surges of the darksome void 
 
 Impetuous, and the thick revolving thoughts 
 
 Encountering thoughts, image on image turned, 
 
 A Chaos of wild silence, where sometimes 
 
 The clashing notions strike out casual light. 
 
 Which soon must perish and be lost again 
 
 In the thick darkness round it. Now, he tries 
 
 With all his might to raise some weighty thought. 
 
 Of me, of fate, or of th' eternal round. 
 
 Which but recoils to crush the labouring mind. 
 
 High are his reasonings, but the feeble clue 
 
 Of fleeting images he draws in vain. . . . 
 
 Poems on outdoor play and native fields are in the direct 
 line of development that leads to the Ode. But suggestions 
 for the thought of the first four stanzas of the Ode, and for 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 387 
 
 the phraseology of all of it, are also to be found in poems on 
 the subject of immortality. Wordsworth must have been 
 familiar with Prior's Solomon, in the third book of which 
 Prior brings together thoughts of childhood and immortal- 
 ity; with Young's Night Thoughts; with Isaac Hawkins 
 Browne's De Animi Immortalitate (1759), translated by 
 numerous versifiers, and especially by Soame Jenyns ; and 
 with Thomas Denton's Immortality. Similarity is often 
 striking in lines on outdoor play and native fields. The 
 difference, however, between poetry and versifying is more 
 obvious in those poems that develop the theme of immor- 
 taHty. Denton, for instance, speaks of the rainbow as 
 "moon-sprung Iris" and "roscid bow," and of the soul as 
 "The ray divine, the pure ethereal mate," and in phrasing the 
 specifically childhood element can not get beyond "prattling 
 childhood lisps with mimick air." 
 
 Yet certain lines in Denton's poem contain hints and 
 sometimes definite suggestions that provide parallels for 
 certain details in Wordsworth's development in the Ode. 
 Denton seems to have had an inkling that the vital spirit, 
 unlike the body which is subject to decay, is not limited to a 
 terrestrial and a future life. In making out a case for im- 
 mortality after death, he looks back to man's hour of birth, 
 at which time the vital spirit is not so much born as re- 
 awakened. He does not definitely postulate a pre-existent 
 state; but he does seem to suggest that birth is not alto- 
 gether the beginning of the vital principle which animates 
 the human clay. 
 
 As when Lucina ends the pangful strife, 
 
 Lifts the young babe, and lights her lambent flame, 
 
 Some powers new-waking hail the dawning life, 
 Some unsuspended live, unchanged, the same; 
 
 So from our dust fresh faculties may bloom, 
 
 Some posthumous survive, and triumph o'er the tomb. 
 
388 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Wordsworth makes this precise and definite, clothes it in 
 appropriate imagery in the lines beginning **The Soul that 
 rises with us," and changes the emphasis by focusing the 
 whole argument not on death but on birth. 
 
 Like Wordsworth, Denton immediately proceeds with 
 his argument by discussing the influence of the body on the 
 re-awakened soul. 
 
 This fibrous frame by nature's kindly law, 
 
 Which gives each joy to keen sensation here, 
 O'er purer scenes of bliss the veil may draw, 
 
 And cloud reflection's more exalted sphere. 
 When Death's cold hand with all dissolving power 
 
 Shall the close tie with friendly stroke unbind, 
 AHke our mortal as our natal hour 
 
 May to new being raise the waking mind : 
 On death's new genial day the soul may rise. 
 Born to some higher life, and hail some brighter skies. 
 
 Wordsworth enriches this and makes it specific in 
 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 Upon the growing Boy. 
 
 He focuses his thought on the child, whereas Denton al- 
 ways approaches with reverse emphasis, his purpose being 
 to prove immortality after death, at which time the soul 
 will again be re-awakened. 
 
 In lines that precede those on birth, Denton also refers 
 to the stages of the child's development. In Denton's lines 
 Wordsworth might well have found certain headings for his 
 development in the Ode. 
 
 See man, by varied periods fixt by fate. 
 
 Ascend perfection's scale by slow degree: 
 The plant-like foetus quits its senseless state. 
 
 And helpless hangs sweet-smiling on the knee ; 
 Soon outward objects steal into the brain, 
 
 Next prattHng childhood lisps with mimic air, 
 Then mem'ry links her fleet ideal train, 
 
 And sober reason rises to compare, 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 389 
 
 The full-grown breast some manly passion warms, 
 It pants for glory's meed, or beats to love's alarms. 
 Then say, since nature's high behest appears 
 
 That living forms should change of being prove, 
 In which new joy the novel scene endears, 
 
 New objects rise to please, new wings to move; 
 Since man too, taught by sage experience, knows 
 
 His frame revolving treads life's varying stage, 
 That the man-plant first vegetating grows. 
 
 Then sense directs, then reason rules in age. . . . 
 
 Denton's poem, then, differs from the Ode in that it 
 emphasizes immortaHty after death; in that the passages 
 which are suggestive of Wordsworth's argument do not 
 appear in the same sequence as in the Ode; and in that his 
 phrasing is conventional. Yet Wordsworth, brooding over 
 the loss of the freshness of the "gleam," and striving to find 
 a philosophical basis for his exaltation of childhood, could 
 have found in Pre-Existence and in Denton's Immortality 
 suggestions for his backward look beyond the birth of the 
 child. 1 
 
 The differences between Wordsworth's emotional lines 
 and the colder reasonings of the earher poets are evident 
 from a comparison with the third book of Prior's Solomon, 
 which in certain respects offers parallels conceived in the 
 mood of the early eighteenth century. 
 
 Prior is disturbed by the problem of earthly existence 
 in relation to immortality. His colorless lines read like 
 versified philosophy. 
 
 1 In Night Thoughts Young writes: 
 God's image disinherited of day, 
 Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made. 
 And again: 
 
 Death but entombs the body, life the soul. 
 Young is concerned with Death, his thesis being that death is the 
 great liberator. 
 
390 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Come, then, my soul; I call thee by that name, 
 Thou busy thing, from whence I know I am. 
 * 
 
 But how cam'st thou to be, or whence thy spring? 
 * 
 
 Or, if thy great existence would inspire 
 To causes more sublime, of heavenly fire 
 Wert thou a spark struck off, a separate ray, 
 Ordained to mingle with terrestrial clay. 
 
 He finds upon reflection that he came forth ''naked" and 
 must again lie "naked" in the tomb ; he uses the word again 
 in ''helpless and naked, on a woman's knees." Prior is in 
 a questioning mood. Wordsworth is not in doubt ; he has a 
 positive vision, expressed in imagery born of deep emo- 
 tional faith: 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting. 
 And Cometh from afar: 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home. 
 
 It was common enough before Wordsworth to write of 
 human life as spent on an island or an isthmus. The idea 
 that man looked across vast spaces, best expressed in terms 
 of the illimitable ocean, was congenial to poets. Cowper 
 wrote in Retirement: 
 
 Opening the map of God's extensive plan, 
 We find a little isle, this life of man. 
 
 William Thompson had written in Sickness (Book IV, The 
 Recovery), 
 
 While on this isthmus of my fate I lie, 
 Jutting into Eternity's wide sea. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 391 
 
 In the Essay on Man, Pope wrote, 
 
 Placed on this isthmus of a middle state. 
 
 Prior gave the same thought a different emphasis: 
 
 Amid two seas, on one small point of land, 
 
 Weary'd, uncertain, and amazed, we stand : 
 
 On either side our thoughts incessant turn ; 
 
 Forward we dread, and looking back we mourn; 
 
 Losing the present in this dubious haste. 
 
 And lost ourselves betwixt the future and the past. 
 
 Wordsworth's lines in The Preln.de more definitely shape 
 the thought, and are suggestive of his attitude in the Ode. 
 
 not less a tract 
 Of the same isthmus, which our spirits cross 
 In progress from their native continent 
 To earth and human life. (V, 535-538) 
 
 In the Ode, Wordsworth's sonorous Hues have clothed this 
 thought with flesh and blood. Wordsworth has, moreover, 
 definitely connected his lines with childhood. 
 
 Hence in a season of calm weather 
 Though inland far we be. 
 Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither. 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the Children sport upon the shore. 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 There is also a vast difference between the nature pas- 
 sages of Prior and Wordsworth. Prior is impersonal and 
 cold: 
 
 From his first fountain and beginning ouze, 
 Down to the sea each brook and torrent flows. 
 
 Wordsworth, a century later, gives expression to personal 
 love and observation : 
 
392 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 I love the brooks which down their channels fret, 
 Even more than when I tripped lightly as they. 
 
 Even when Prior is personal, he is colorless : 
 
 Each evening I behold the setting Sun, 
 With downward speed into the Ocean run. 
 
 Wordsworth's brooding spirit identifies itself with the 
 powers of nature: 
 
 The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality. 
 
 At the close of Solomon, Prior breaks into a song of 
 praise, but his imagery is conventional : 
 
 I said; — and instant bad the priests prepare 
 The ritual sacrifice and solemn prayer. 
 Select from vulgar herds, with garlands gay, 
 A hundred bulls ascend the way. 
 The artful youth proceed to form the choir; 
 They breathe the flute, or strike the vocal wire. 
 The maids in comely order next advance; 
 They beat the timbrel, and instruct the dance. 
 
 There is a vast difference between this early eighteenth- 
 century statement and Wordsworth's naturalistic fervor a 
 century later. Though there is a faint suggestion of the 
 biblical language used by Prior, who was writing with the 
 biblical account as his primary source, Wordsworth sings 
 his song of praise in terms of the naturaHstic school : 
 
 Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! 
 
 And let the young Lambs bound 
 
 As to the tabor's sound ! 
 We in thought will join your throng, 
 
 Ye that pipe and ye that play. 
 
 Ye that through your hearts today 
 
 Feel the gladness of the May! 
 What though the radiance which was once so bright 
 Be now forever taken from my sight. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 393 
 
 Though nothing can bring back the hour 
 Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; 
 We will grieve not, rather find 
 Strength in what remains behind; 
 In the primal sympathy 
 Which having been must ever be. 
 
 Unlike eighteenth-century poets like Gray, Beattie, Isaac 
 Hawkins Browne, and others who wrote in imitation of 
 Milton, and who could see no way out of the melancholy 
 induced by contemplation of the difference between age and 
 youth, Wordsworth catches at least temporarily the consol- 
 ing gleam. He carries over the gloomier conception of the 
 earfier poets only to protest against it and to triumph over it. 
 In the eighteenth century there are numerous hymns 
 and odes to health ; but all have to do with physical joy or 
 its loss. Only occasionally is the matter connected defi- 
 nitely with childhood. Wordsworth's power to take the 
 cruder conceptions of minor versifiers and suffuse them 
 with spiritual suggestions is obvious when his lines are read 
 with those in Isaac Hawkins Browne's Ode to Health. 
 Browne calls upon ''rosy Health" to return and be 
 
 Indulgent now as once you smiled. 
 In golden Youth's propitious May, 
 When jocund danced my hours away. 
 With love, and joy, and rapture blest. 
 And thou wast there to crown the rest. 
 
 His poem is a curious jumble of pagan and ascetic ideals. 
 With one eye on Milton, and the other on nature, he is not 
 successful in phrasing a clear-cut development of his theme. 
 In the closing stanzas, however, while he is contemplating 
 nature in spring, Browne pauses long enough to realize his 
 sense of something lost between youth and old age: 
 
394 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 Through every form of mystic birth, 
 The swarming air, the teeming earth, 
 Through all the fruitful deep contains, 
 Thy sovereign vital influence reigns, 
 Mixes, ferments, inspires the whole, 
 Pours the glad warmth, the genial soul, 
 Breathes in the breeze, distils in showers. 
 Swells the young bud, and wakes the flowers : 
 With livelier green the herbage springs, 
 The violet blows, the linnet sings. 
 Its richest colouring Nature wears. 
 And Pleasure leads the wanton years. 
 
 This merely reminds him that he can not regain the health 
 
 of his childhood : 
 
 O ! see I pine distressed, forlorn. 
 And seek in vain thy wished return. 
 
 Certain lines in the Ode and in Langhorne's To the River 
 Eden (1759) emphasize an essential difference in power of 
 insig'ht and phrasing. Both poets were occupied with the 
 recollection of childhood in the presence of natural objects, 
 and both definitely reacted to their inability in later years to 
 identify themselves with nature as fully as in the days of 
 childhood. Langhorne is almost wholly external and de- 
 scriptive, and hardly feels the later poet's identity of self 
 with nature. (He came so close, however, to Wordsworth's 
 mood that it is not surprising to find that Wordsworth 
 thought very highly of Langhorne's poetry. Langhorne 
 would have the ''maids of Memory" waken recollections of 
 the days when Nature impressed "her image on my mind." 
 There still come to him flashes of the old delight in nature. 
 In the tree beside his favorite stream he once again finds a 
 congenial stimulus: 
 
 The poplar tall, that waving near 
 
 Would whisper to thy murmurs free; 
 
 Yet rustling seems to soothe mine ear, 
 And trembles when I sigh for thee. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 395 
 
 Like Wordsworth he realizes that he can not Hve over again 
 the joys of childhood : 
 
 In vain — the maids of Memory fair 
 No more in golden visions play. 
 
 His visions are of play hours, friendship, and love ("No 
 Delia's smile approves my lay"). He is sorrowful not so 
 much because he misses something in nature, as because he 
 can not reproduce the joys of his childhood. Like Browne 
 he is sighing for a return of palpable pleasures enjoyed in 
 the presence of nature. 
 
 Wordsworth, on the other hand, is momentarily moved 
 to sorrow because his visions have to do with spiritual mat- 
 ters. He is searching for the "gleam" in nature itself. 
 He can no longer sustain the impression of a subtle power 
 to which he responded spontaneously in childhood. His mis- 
 givings are precipitated and crystallized when he looks upon 
 familiar objects which no longer as in boyhood sustain the 
 mood for which he longs. 
 
 But there's a Tree, of many, one, 
 A single Field which I have looked upon. 
 Both of them speak of something that is gone : 
 
 The Pansy at my feet 
 
 Doth the same tale repeat: 
 Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 
 Where is it now, the glory and the dream? 
 
 Although Wordsworth gave fullest expression to their 
 conception, there is, then, an essential difference between 
 him and those poets who had written feelingly of nature and 
 childhood. This lies first in the power to convey his sense 
 of the "gleam." And secondly, although moved to grief 
 over loss, he does not feel that the loss is complete, so that 
 he is thankful for what remains. He added, furthermore, 
 the thought of continuous existence. After tracing the 
 
396 ENGLISH CHILDHOOD 
 
 soul's coming in trailing clouds of glory, he exalts the 
 child in a passage that carries to its inevitable conclusion 
 the conception for which poets had been groping since 
 Shaftesbury and Thomson. Many readers are doubtful 
 whether the passage should, or even can, be literally inter- 
 preted. Nevertheless, it truly represents the highest poetic 
 flight in the spirit of those poets who down through the 
 eighteenth century had looked upon the child with increas- 
 ing aflfection, understanding, and reverence. 
 
 Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 
 
 Thy Soul's immensity; 
 Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 
 Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, 
 That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
 Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, — 
 
 Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 
 
 On whom those truths do rest. 
 Which we are toiling all our lives to find. 
 In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 
 Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
 Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, 
 A Presence which is not to be put by; 
 * 
 
 Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might 
 
 Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, 
 
 Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
 
 The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 
 
 Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 
 
 Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, 
 
 And custom lie upon thee with a weight. 
 
 Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life I 
 
INDEX 
 
 Age, of children, poets on, 2 — 6, 
 
 304. 
 Akenside. Mark, 89, 94—95, 113, 
 
 234, 299, Zn, 378. 
 Animals, 7, 21. 24, Zd, 99ff., 262ff. 
 
 Barbauld, A. L., 258—259, 287. 
 
 Beattie, James, The Minstrel, 3, 
 40, 70, 71, 75, 104—105, 158, 
 237—238, Z1(i, 378, 381, 393; 
 Lord Hay, 31—32, 327. 
 
 Benevolence, universal, animals, 
 96ff., (see also Blake, Shaftes- 
 bury, and Wordsworth). 
 
 Berkeley. Bishop, 217. 370. 
 
 Blackstone, William, 78. 
 
 Blair, Robert, 58—59. Ill, 331, 
 ZZZ, ZZ6, 2>2,7, 338. 
 
 Blake, William, 262—298, 1, 43, 
 65, 66, 127, 149, 200, 219, 220, 
 234. 259, 261. 314, 339, 340, 
 349, 351, 353, 357, Z7Z, 379, 
 383; children of the poor, 270, 
 272, 274, 278, 282. 286, 287; 
 Christian terminology, 293 ; 
 ideal happiness, 65, 282—283, 
 291, 296, 301; indebtedness to 
 eighteenth century, 262ff., 268, 
 276, 281, 283, 295, 299; natural 
 desires, 273, 275, 284. 292, 293, 
 294; not sectarian, 267; publi- 
 cations for children, 264; re- 
 verence for child nature, 277, 
 
 278, 279. 285. 291; simple 
 language, 266 ; universal be- 
 nevolence, 267. 272, 274, 278, 
 282, 286, 287; Wordsworth, 
 on. 300. (See also Shaftes- 
 bury, Rousseau, Animals, Re- 
 volution.) 
 
 Bloomfield, Robert. 81, 249. 
 
 Browne, Isaac Hawkins. 387, 393, 
 395. 
 
 Bruce, Michael, Daphnis, 84; 
 Fountain, To a, 84; Lochleven, 
 51, 65, 71, 82, 93, 158, 163, 241, 
 354. 377, 378; Lochleven No 
 More, 78; Spring, Elegy to, 
 105; Wordsworth, 75, 87, 92, 
 94. 
 
 Burns, Robert, Address to Beel- 
 zebub, 135 ; Auld Lang Syne, 
 59, 83; Ayr, 77; Birth of a 
 Posthumous Child, 40, 42; 
 Bonie Jean, 103 ; Bonnie Lad 
 That's Far Awa, 40; Cotter's 
 Saturday - Night, 131 — 134, 
 158, 159; Cruel are the Par- 
 ents, 103; Miss Cruickshank, 
 40, 42; Death and Dr. Horn- 
 book, 196 ; Iventory, 241 ; Man 
 Was Made to Mourn, 134; 
 Michie, Epitaph on William, 
 197; Mouse, To a, 105, 282; 
 Rantin Dog, the Daddie O't, 
 40; Rose-Bud By My Early 
 
398 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Walk, 40, 41 ; Ruined Farmer, 
 130; Sensibility, 102; Stella, 
 Elegy on, 79; Welcome to his 
 Love-begotten Daughter, 39; 
 Wounded Hare, 105 ;— Blake, 
 and, 266, 281, 283; predeces- 
 sors, and, 305. 
 Byrom, John, 175, 176, 197, 211, 
 256. 
 
 Cawthorn, James, 31, 176 — 177, 
 192, 210, 213, 243. 
 
 Chap books, 236ff., 243ff. 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 63, 77, 112, 
 154, 163, 194, 208, 243. 
 
 Children in the Wood, 119, 234 — 
 238, 246. 
 
 Churchill, Charles, 182, 190. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 49, 90, 
 103, 104, 136, 288, 308, 309. 314, 
 320, 350, 351. 356. 
 
 Collins, William, 84, 89—90, 91, 
 93, 113—114, 233, 239. 
 
 Cooper, John Gilbert, 22, 91, 162, 
 232, 327. 
 
 Cotton, Nathaniel, 97, 101, 232, 
 280. 
 
 Cowper, William, Anne Bodham, 
 To My Cousin, 2, 3; Blake, 
 and, 266; Conversation, 185, 
 246; Dyer, and, 140, 141, 158; 
 Error, The Progress of, 208; 
 Hope, 31, 208 ; John Gilpin, 63 ; 
 Mother's Picture, On the Re- 
 ceipt of My, 43, 44, 347; Ode, 
 129 ; On Observing some 
 Names, 15; Retirement, 56, 
 390; Table Talk, 31, 180; Task, 
 The, 55, 126, 128, 149, 370; 
 Thurlow, Edward, 81 ; Tiroci- 
 
 nium, 161, 174, 181, 184, 185— 
 189, 192, 255, 271; Truth, 127; 
 Valediction, 208 ; Warren 
 Hastings, To, 81 ; Wordsworth, 
 and, 53, 71, 72. 106, 129, 130, 
 Z72', Lines on a Sleeping In- 
 fant, 304. 
 Crabbe, George, Borough, The, 
 204, 205 ; Parish Register, The, 
 148, 149, 154, 195, 204, 246, 
 250, 299; Village, The, 64, 77, 
 112. 140, 146, 147, 148, 150, 
 151, 158, 159, 271, 367, Z7Z, 374. 
 
 Denton, Thomas, 387—389. 
 Dyer, John, 2, 56. 139—144, 146, 
 147, 152, 153, 158, 159, 190. 
 
 Flogging, 208fif. 
 
 Gay, John, 13, 22—23, 110, 139, 
 197, 234, 235—236, 237, 239. 
 355, Z7Z. 374. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 65, 77, 112, 
 144—146, 158, 184, 190. 193, 
 202—203, 204, 241, 251, 253, 
 254. 
 
 Graeme, James, 71, 7Z, 81 — 82, 
 109, 178, 210. 
 
 Grahame, James, 160, 233, 366 — 
 367, 371—372. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 31, 51, 59, 66—67, 
 77. 93, 94, 191, 234, 284, 325, 
 2>Z7, 338, 381—382, 393. 
 
 Hamilton, William, 115—116. 
 Harte, Walter, 27—28. 
 Headley, Henry, 118—119, 271. 
 Henley, William, 47. 
 Hill, Aaron, 4, 5, 24, 25, 122—123. 
 
INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 Hoyland, Francis. 32—33, 39, 51, 
 54, 69. 
 
 Industrial Revolution, 2, 99ff., 
 
 138ff., 156, 160. 
 Industry, The House of, 142ff., 
 
 374. 
 
 Jago, Richard, 71, 72,, 82, 182— 
 
 183, 201, 205, 329—330. 
 Jerningham, Edward, Z7 — 38, 
 
 119—121, 271. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 78, 175, 180, 
 
 184, 207, 210, 223, 233, 234, 248, 
 249, 251, 253. 
 
 Johnson, S., (of Shrewsbury), 
 211—216. 
 
 Lamb, Charles and Mary, 50, 54, 
 57, 62, 77, 88—89, 127, 203, 
 234, 238, 260, 261, 264, 280, 
 288, 318, 351, Z7Z. 
 
 Langhorne, John, Eden, To the, 
 92, 394; Enlargement of the 
 Mind, 15, 291 ; Genius of West- 
 moreland, 92; Irwan, Farewell 
 Hymn to the Valley of, 92; 
 Owen of Carron, 23; Ponte- 
 fract Castle, Ruins of, 330; 
 Wordsworth, and, 91, 92, 93, 
 355, 394. 
 
 Lloyd, Robert, 15, 29—30, 177— 
 178, 183. 190, 194, 205. 
 
 Locke, John, 1, 25, Z7, 144, 161, 
 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 181, 
 184, 223. 
 
 Logan, John, 78, 87. 
 
 Lovibond, Edward, 31, 51, 69 — 
 70, 7S, 90, 103—104, 109, 205— 
 207, 217, 281, 282, 328, 254, 278. 
 
 Lyttleton, Lord, 2)2,, 103, 234 . 
 
 Mackenzie. Henry, 111, 144, 233, 
 
 241, 381. 
 Mason, William. 38, 61, 91, 103, 
 
 163, 210, 238. 
 Mickle, William Julius, 5. 60, 
 
 61, 62, 65, 66, 70, 72, 72, 79, 
 
 86, 150, 163, 240. 354. 
 More, Hannah, 137, 150ff., 156— 
 
 157, 191, 361. 
 Mother Goose, 254. 
 
 Native fields, 76 — 96, (see also 
 Akenside, Bruce, Collins, 
 Wordsworth) . 
 
 Newberry, John, 173, 219, 251ff., 
 264, 266, 351. 
 
 Philips, Ambrose, 19—22. 
 
 Philipps, John, 11—12, 15, 51, 
 229. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 19, 189. 327; 
 Dunciad, The, 161, 164—166, 
 169, 172, 174, 175, 205, 209, 
 210, 211, 214, 216, 270, 271; 
 Essay on Man, 12, 391; Mes- 
 siah, The, 12 — 13; his mother, 
 25, 44. 
 
 Pre-Existence, A Poem in Imi- 
 tation of Milton, 277, 384—386, 
 389. 
 
 Prior, Matthew, 2, 15, 16—18, 41, 
 44, 49, 176, 190, 191. 192, 220, 
 299, 308, 310, 311, 320, 378, 
 387, 389—392. 
 
 Revolution, French, The, 47, 99, 
 134—136, 151, 270, 272, 274, 
 276, 291, 243ff. 
 
400 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 246, 247, 249 — 
 250, 253. 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 1, 3, 34, 
 48, 87, 99, 103, 107, 120, 161, 
 171, 173, 207, 212, 213, 214, 215, 
 216, 250, 255, 256, 260, 261, 270, 
 271, 277, 278, 346, 348, 349, 
 350, 358. 
 
 Russell, Thomas, 27, 128-129. 
 
 396; his mother, 26—27, 43; 
 Spring, 25, 279; Summer, 52, 
 55, 57, 58, 110, 115; Autumn, 
 110; Winter, 60, 102, 110—111, 
 239; Liberty, 112—113, 164. 
 
 Thompson, William, 13, 390. 
 
 Tickell, Thomas, 108—109, 190, 
 234, 239—240, 299—300; Horn- 
 Book, 192—193, 197. 
 
 Savage, Richard, 114 — 115. 
 Scott, John, (of Amwell), 20, 34, 
 
 51, 52, 54, 56, 67-68, 75, 77, 
 
 89, 103, 109, 116, 129—130, 140, 
 
 141. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 147, 292, 300, 
 
 301. 
 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley 
 
 Cooper, Earl of, 1, 98—99, 105, 
 
 106, 129, 184, 278, 291, 298, 346, 
 
 358, 378, 396; (See also Blake, 
 
 Wordsworth). 
 Shaw, Cuthbert, 34—36, 39, 103. 
 Shenstone, William, 23, 51, 61, 
 
 62, 63, 68, 79, 82, 182, 196, 197— 
 
 202, 203, 204, 234, 282, 372. 
 Somerville, William, 30, 61, 66, 
 
 73, 80, 100, 101—102, 104, 116, 
 
 209, 210, 249, 256. 
 Southey, Robert, 79, 82—83, 87— 
 
 88, 95, 106—107, 118, 136—138, 
 
 158, 290, 299, 344. 
 Swifti)[oJI)than. 28, 29, 63, 80— 
 
 81, 89,'T75rid' 9^' ^4, 235, 
 247, 249, 372. ^ ^ 
 
 Thomson, James, 39, 51, 67, 91, 
 92, 94, 97, 98, 100, 106, 117, 
 
 159, 241, 269, 276, 278, 281, 291, 
 312, 314, 317, 327, 343, 344, 381, 
 
 Warton, Joseph, Fashion, 37, 
 100, 103; Library, 109; To 
 Fancy, 330. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, 47, 75, 91, 178, 
 234, 308, 377. 
 
 Watts, Isaac, 3, 42, 101, 216—217, 
 219, 220—230, 257, 258, 261, 
 264, 266, 267, 287, 294, 308. 
 
 West, Gilbert, Education, 62 
 166—169, 174, 189, 208, 271 
 
 White, H. K., 51, 54, 64—65, 68, 
 119, 121—122, 156, 195, 199, 
 203—204, 238, 242—243, 246, 
 249, 325, 326, 328—329. 
 
 Whitehead, William, 28, 109, 207. 
 
 Winchilsea, Lady, 23—24. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 46, 292, 
 304, 305, 307, 308, 312, 329, 
 345, 358, 359, 375, 378. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, children, 
 age of, 3, 4, 5 ; and Blake, 262, 
 299, 300, 301, 302, 339, 340, 349, 
 351, 357; benevolence, 103, 130, 
 276, 344ff. ; baptism, 307 ; birth, 
 38, 44ff., 306—307; books and 
 reading, 234, 237, 239, 244, 247, 
 248, 250, 251, 260, 261, 349ff.; 
 chap books, 244; childhood the 
 foundation of his philosophy, 
 164, 302, 314, 344, 382ff. ; child- 
 
[NDEX 
 
 401 
 
 less marriage, 23 ; children of 
 the poor. 52, 56. 97, 137, 139, 
 144, 147, 151, 306, 313, 317. 
 343ff, (See also Industry) ; 
 Children in the Wood, 234, 
 237; Christmas, 306. 323, 324; 
 city children, 314 — 324; con- 
 firmation, 5. 6; education, 62, 
 69, 72f{., 191, 216, 217. 260, 261, 
 299, 300, 302, 348, 361. 368, 
 369; grandchildren, 64, 303; 
 graves of children, 325 — 327; 
 happiness of children, 313 ; 
 Hawkeshead, 55. 62, 151, 164, 
 303, 32Z 325, 334, 354; House 
 of Industry, 144, 160; Immor- 
 tality, 341, 374ff., see also Ode; 
 Industry, 361—374; Jack the 
 Giant-Killer, 322, 352; lulla- 
 bies, 42, 43, 308 (see also Blake, 
 Watts, Dorothy Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and T. Warton) ; 
 medieval elements, 327 — 331 ; 
 model child, 350; mother, 43, 
 44, 346, 347, 352, 353, 356, see 
 also Cowper, Langhorne, and 
 Thomson; native fields, 51, 
 59ff., 76, 78, 79, 89, 91, 94, 96, 
 318, 342. 343, 344, 376ff., 382; 
 naturalistic supernaturalism, 
 334-338, see also 74, 76; poet 
 of childhood. 299, 302 ; prayers. 
 
 309; Revolution, French, 47, 
 343ff., 369. see also Blake, 
 Rousseau, Shaftesbury; Rous- 
 seau, 87, 346, 348, 349, 350, 
 358, see also Rousseau ; Shaf- 
 tesbury, 346, 358, 378, 396, see 
 also Shaftesbury. — Alice Fell, 
 372—373; Anecdote for Fath- 
 ers, 302, 358; Excursion, 3. 23, 
 47, 62, 73, 137. 160, 217, 237, 
 250, 302, 303, 306fif. ; Fidelity, 
 282; Foresight, 358—360, see 
 also 53 ; Idle Shepherd-Boys, 
 56 — 57; Kitten and the Falling 
 Leaves, 282. 309. 310; Lucy, 
 343, 364; Michael, 3, 4, 44, 45, 
 56. 303, 341, 342, 345; Oak and 
 the Broom, 53; Ode, Intima- 
 tions, 78, 148, 291, 300, 302. 314, 
 340, 341, 357, 374—396, see 
 also Immortality ; Pet Lamb, 
 282; Prelude, 4,'59— 61, 62, 65, 
 69, 72—76, 78, 87, 89, 91, 94. 96, 
 130, 234, 244, 248, 299. 300. 301, 
 302, 303ff., 348—357; Spar- 
 rozv's Nest, 83, 84; Stepping- 
 Stones, 59; There was a hoy, 
 5; To H. C, 47—49; JVe are 
 Seven, 286, 302. 338—341. 
 
 Young. Edward. 232. 233. 380— 
 381. 387. 389. 
 
^. 
 
 VITA 
 
 I was born on January 19, 1883, ^" Wilson, Minnesota. 
 My father, who was at that time a clergyman, was born in 
 Columbus, Wisconsin, and my mother (nee Gise) in Al- 
 bany, New York. After attending the public schools, I 
 studied in the classical course at Northwestern College, re- 
 ceiving the A. B. in 1904. From 1904 to 1906 I attended 
 lectures in the Graduate School at Harvard University under 
 Professors G. P. Baker, G. L. Kittredge, F. N. Robinson, W. 
 H. Schofield, and Barrett Wendell, receiving the A. M. in 
 June, 1906. From 1906 to 1919 I taught in the Department 
 of English, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. I was in- 
 structor from 1906 to 1909, Assistant Professor from 1909 
 to 1912, Associate Professor from 1912 to 1915, and Pro- 
 fessor of English from 191 5 to 19 19. In the summer of 
 1919 and during the academic year 1919 — 11920 I was on 
 leave of absence as a resident student in the Graduate School 
 of Columbia University. During this time I attended the 
 Seminar conducted by Professor A. H. Thorndike, and also 
 lectures under Professors C. S. Baldwin, G. P. Krapp, W. 
 W. Lawrence, A. H. Thorndike, W. P. Trent, and E. H. 
 Wright. In the spring of 1920 I resigned my professor- 
 ship at Syracuse University, and became an Instructor in 
 English in University Extension, Columbia University. I 
 have published a syllabus for use in a freshman course in 
 English composition, another for a sophomore course in 
 English literature, and have written two articles for the 
 Bulletin of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering 
 Education. 
 
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