For forming a truly admirable literary taste, I cannot indeed say much in favor of my own motley collection of books just mentioned, for I was simply tumbled in among them and left to browse, in accordance with Charles Lamb’s whimsical plan for Bridget Elia.  More might have been added, and some taken away; but they had in them a world of instruction and illumination which children miss who read too exclusively those books written with rigid determination down to their level, neglecting certain old classics for which we fondly believe there are no substitutes.  You cannot always persuade the children of this generation to attack “Robinson Crusoe,” and if they do they are too sophisticated to thrill properly when they come to Friday’s footsteps in the sand.  Think of it, my contemporaries:  think of substituting for that intense moment some of the modern “tuppenny” climaxes!

I do not wish to drift into a cheap cynicism, and apotheosize the old days at the expense of the new.  We are often inclined to paint the Past with a halo round its head which it never wore when it was the Present.  We can reproduce neither the children nor the conditions of fifty or even twenty-five years ago.  To-day’s children must be fitted for to-day’s tasks, educated to answer to-day’s questions, equipped to solve to-day’s problems; but are we helping them to do this in absolutely the best way?  At all events, it is difficult to join in the paean of gratitude for the tons of children’s books that are turned out yearly by parental publishers.  If the children of the past did not have quite enough deference paid to their individuality, their likes and dislikes, and if their needs were too often left until the needs of everybody else had been considered,—­on the other hand, they were not surfeited with well-meant but ill-directed attentions.  If the hay was thrown so high in the rack that they could not pluck a single straw without stretching up for it, why, the hay was generally worth stretching for, and was, perhaps, quite as healthful as the sweet and easily digested nursery porridge which some people adopt as exclusive diet for their darlings nowadays.

Let us look a little at some of the famous children’s books of a past generation, and see what was their general style and purpose.  Take, for instance, those of Mrs. Barbauld, who may be included in that group of men and women who completely altered the style of teaching and writing for children—­Rousseau, de Genlis, the Edgeworths, Jacotot, Froebel, and Diesterweg, all great teachers,—­didactic, deadly-dull Mrs. Barbauld, who composed, as one of her biographers tells us, “a considerable number of miscellaneous pieces for the instruction and amusement of young persons, especially females.”  (Girls were always “young females” in those days; children were “infants,” and stories were “tales.”) Who can ever forget those “Early Lessons,” written for her adopted son Charles, who appeared in the page sometimes in a state of hopeless ignorance and imbecility, and sometimes clad in the wisdom of the ancients?  The use of the offensive phrase “excessively pretty,” as applied to a lace tidy by a very tiny female named Lucy, brings down upon her sinful head eleven pages of such moralizing as would only be delivered by a modern mamma on hearing a confession of robbery or murder.