"The permanency of these a.s.sociations is beautifully expressed in the well-known lines of Coleridge:
""The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason; But still the heart doth need a language; still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names, Spirits or G.o.ds that used to share this earth With man as with their friend; and at this day "Tis Jupiter who brings whate"er is great And Venus who brings every thing that"s fair.""
CHAPTER III
BOOKS TO BE OWNED, TO BE READ, AND TO BE REREAD
"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."--GOLDSMITH.
JUST how far books and reading are questions of taste, or should be looked on as questions of taste merely, is pa.s.sing hard to say. That there are prevailing fashions, local-colour variations, and a few more or less permanent models is noticeable to such a degree that an observer might conclude motley to be the only wear. The readers seem to be no more able to agree in what they like than did the urchins over the pease-porridge in the nursery rhyme:
Some like it hot, Some like it cold, Some like it in the pot Nine days old.
So it goes in books with every one to his own liking, though the particular likings are a very unsubstantial guide to the literary merits of the books liked. A book may become a fashion based on conventional acquiescence and appearances rather than on real worth. Let the judgment of individualism, with courage and restraint, lay bare the fashion, and where then is its habitation or what is its name? Such judgment sets up more or less arbitrary lines of taste that run wide, and it makes a guess at what is enduring literature, a hazardous kind of guess. Yet the peculiar thing of it all is that in this guess pedantry is as likely to play false as is the capricious fancy of the reading public that takes the book of the hour, whatever it be. This makes a kind of self-const.i.tuted division of readers, each satisfied with his lot and each serving a purpose.
Some readers" tastes, however, are neither prudish nor slovenly. They are very catholic and succeed in picking out what is good from both the bookish and the popular kinds of books. They can read any book that is a book. But you recall that Charles Lamb could not reckon directories, scientific treatises, the works of Hume and Gibbon, and generally those "volumes which no gentleman"s library should be without" as being books.
If to these were added those books which no gentleman"s library should contain, we come to a field fairly easy of investigation. In other words, we must get back to that field that includes the literature of power rather than the literature of knowledge. Of course, if somebody chooses to read blockheaded encyclopaedias, withering economic essays, proper Sunday school books, soph.o.m.oric novels, or privately printed verse, that is purely his own concern; but such reading is beyond the pale of real books as they relate to well-regulated courses in the home or in school life.
How far is a teacher to be influenced in his selection of books for students by their lines of taste? That depends on how far the tastes of readers in general indicate that books of their liking are to be cla.s.sed as books of power, as real literature. It is rash to say that a book has real merit because it becomes the best seller of a season; nor is it to be condemned for the very reason that it is a best seller. However, the general praise of a hundred thousand readers is not so much an index to the book"s merit as the book is an index to the character of the readers who praise it. Unqualified laudation of a new book, especially a novel, is an annoying kind of hysteria that has failed to find any other outlet. But the very fact that the book is opportune or spectacular carries it along. It grows up and flourishes in a day, and in a day dies out.
It is curious to note how times change in the reading world and with them lines of taste. To-day the line most evident in the American reading public, and the one most difficult to meet in the development of a taste for good books, is the pa.s.sion to be up-to-date, as its commercial phraseology would have it. It is awakened by that wonderful agent, the advertising appeal, that deals not with quality but with quant.i.ty. In books it calls for a story, and that story must be the latest or it is certain to be absolutely neglected. On being asked what dish he preferred at a dinner, Th.o.r.eau said, "The nearest." That was in keeping with his theory of cutting down the denominator; the theory of the reader of the latest is one of multiplying the numerator. As the proper thing, each new book is taken, horns, hide, and tallow. The reader"s reverence for the present grows apace, and he no longer has use for old wine, old friends, and old books. This is a reflection of a widespread impression in American life that up to the present time but little truth of substantial value as to methods of living and thinking has been found out. A wonderful industrial progress, working through inventive skill, has given the notion that anything over a generation old is scarcely worth a pa.s.sing notice, a notion fatal to all art. Every one must seize in a hurry the newest thing in the market, lest he be branded as out of date. And it all looks as if everybody was trying to do what Alice found them trying to do in Wonderland, running as fast as they could to keep where they were.
This mad rush for the latest is largely aided and abetted by that invention of the devil, the literary section of many Sunday newspapers.
Finding research a bit dull, the ambitious or needy doctor of philosophy launches into literary criticism for the reading public. He at once discovers that the college soph.o.m.ore who wrote a particular story is another Thackeray in style. Then in turn a d.i.c.kens or a Balzac is found out. Finally the news is pa.s.sed on the Rialto that there is being issued a story combining the delightful characteristics of the three old masters. And thus and thus it goes, with the whirligig of Sunday newspaper criticism spinning out the tastes of the reading public.
Now if these t.i.tled critics ever cease discovering great new books as regularly as the day of rest comes around, or if the paper reading public cease to take these critics as truthful, then the teacher may hope to find a more sympathetic field in which to work. Of course the teacher must shake off his pedantry and quit his foolishness in taking a cla.s.sic beyond the years of the boy whose veins are full of red blood, and putting it on a dissecting table for the study of etymology and syntax. He must know fairly well the boy"s likes and dislikes and remember that they are very strong. And he must also remember that the boy is joined to his idols, and these are not to be broken until better ones are subst.i.tuted. Iconoclasm for its own sake is sheer waste. The teacher himself must be wedded to good literature, or his efforts will avail little. If he knows, from his own quiet reading, a few good books well, that is enough. Sympathetic appreciation, like good nature, is contagious. If the teacher does not appreciate the book, the boy will not--unless he does it out of pardonable perversity.
The teacher has more to do with shaping the boy"s reading than he at first sees. He is apt to hesitate because the public library, ambitious for a circulation record, gives the boy what he will be likely to read; the Sunday school library, anxious to inculcate moral principles through stories false to life, gives him what he does not want; the home, eager to please him in every way, gives him anything he asks for. Yet in the face of this threefold condition, the wise and sympathetic teacher can direct an average course of reading that has in it more good than poor books. To do this, he must work along two lines: discourage overreading and encourage ownership in books. The practice of overreading is the worst reading practice in modern life. Like all extremism, it is hard to meet. It is as unpopular to oppose unlimited reading as it is to oppose unlimited charity or unlimited education; yet they all need to be carried out in moderation. The aim should be the mastery of a few good books and the discouragement of the pa.s.sion for constant variety that indicates a lack of singleness of purpose through a lack of self-control and the power of sustained attention. The greatest aid to this will be the encouragement of small savings and the buying of good editions. When this is done, encourage the boy to read out loud to his family at home in the evenings the portions of his book he likes best. If he does this, he and his book are friends as long as he continues reading. Soon he will have a small, well-chosen, and much-used library. The boy who will buy a book with his own money, will read aloud from it to his family, will reread it, is safely started on the way to becoming a well-read man.
After feeling the need of good books in the home where they can be turned to as the fancy directs, and after feeling a desire to buy such books, the boy will next need to know what t.i.tles to select. And that is no easy question. Temperament, home circ.u.mstances, occupation, and many other factors enter into it. But the thing that helps out is the fact that the range of books of power is universal, embracing so many moods, that enough good t.i.tles may be found for any one, however whimsical his tastes may be. In fact the boy will find many more good books to his liking than he will ever find time to read, or than he needs to read.
The problem will become one of exclusion. Two lists for two boys of different dispositions may vary widely and yet both be good literature.
But in the range of English books there are a few that the common judgment of readers and the praise of critics have so generally cla.s.sed as necessary to the shelves of a cultivated man, that they should be given first place and in some way or other a reading and a rereading of them be secured. It is not meant that reading is never to depart from this seemingly arbitrary standard. That would be at least prudish, to say nothing of its being impracticable. What is meant is that such things as comic supplements, at once stupid, silly, and debauching to both the intellectual and the artistic tastes, should be kept from all boys. The daily newspaper with its sensational head-lines telling of crimes is as bad, and the schoolboy has no business with it at all. But maybe the practice most widespread and fatal to an appreciation of books of real worth and power is the addiction to "juveniles" in the ever issuing series. If he has drunk to excess of these, the boy will have hopelessly weakened his ability ever to appreciate anything great. He will never be able to warm to the powerful deeds of Odysseus, Hector, or Joshua--he will be only a tolerable but proper grown-up. In the face of these and many more hindrances, reading will have to be rigidly directed, and in that directing, lines of appeal in the field of good literature can be drawn out. Generally the reason for a boy"s revolting against a good book is the fact that whoever is in control of his reading presupposes that very thing. The book is often timidly handed out and with something of an apologetic air. By some peculiar piece of judgment it is believed that the boy prefers the book that is both insipid and stupid. This ineffectual effort arises from a lack of courage on the part of preceptor and parent: the old, old story of overindulgence. What may be sauce for the father should not always be sauce for the son. The theory that what is good for the one ought to be good for the other, even to food and drink, is only another sophism of a falsely sentimental age that is over-tolerant of what is called personal rights. The fact that Senator h.o.a.r delighted in an occasional yellow back, is no reason why a boy should have such a story when he should be learning his catechism.
Before venturing on a list of books that will serve the boy fairly well as he pa.s.ses through the primary and the grammar grades of school, a few of the superior books that have stood the test of time must be noticed.
They are fundamental in school and in general reading. The arguments of literary critics as to what const.i.tutes this good literature have no place in a work of this nature that aims to aid teachers and parents in selecting books for their children. It is enough to know that the verdict of time has been rendered in favour of such books as "The Arabian Nights" Entertainments," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Gulliver"s Travels." A knowledge of such books is fundamental to any one who is ambitious to master the elements of English literature. And the mere fact that he knows them well will give him a conscious strength and pardonable feeling of superiority that the unlettered youth cannot have.
After this he can be trusted to browse pretty much as he chooses. He may occasionally find the bars down, or maybe later go over the fences; but he has learned to judge of what is worth while, and will surely return to the books that gave him happy hours, whatever other tasks were laid on him.
In selecting this list for schoolboys there is a temptation to take works too mature for school age. This may come from that lingering instinct that supposes every one, no matter what the age, to be interested in the same things in which you are interested. The very best things for manhood are to be reserved for that time of life. Grammar school boys cannot appreciate the playful humour of Lamb, the prophetic scolding of Carlyle, or Thackeray"s keen a.n.a.lysis of human weaknesses and foibles; neither can a high school boy do it, and it is foolish to insist that it be done. Schoolboys are not men, and they might be told to reserve the greater part of Carlyle and Thackeray until two or three years after they have cast their first vote. Neither author is adapted to a beardless youth. But then we have that wonderful pair of story-tellers, Scott and Stevenson! What boy can resist them or would ever think of trying to do so? If Margaret Ogilvy would not lay down a book of "that Stevenson man" until she had found out how the laddie got out of the barrel, do you suppose that a boy with adventurous blood in his veins could do so? Though the best test for a child"s book is the fact that it has charms for the grown-up, he would certainly be foolish who would insist that the great books for mature men and women be read in youth. It is after all school days are ended and the boy has become a man well started in the actual affairs of life that he can read and appreciate "Vanity Fair," "Adam Bede," "Tess of the D"Urbervilles," or "Anna Karenina." The tendency to take great books for mature readers, abridge and overedit them, and then present them to adventurous boys by a laboratory method of minute dissection, is annoying and foolish. Boys who still enjoy harnessing a dog to a wagon are neither university students nor good literary critics. But they do like to find out how Robinson Crusoe made a canoe, Tom Canty ate his first royal dinner, or David Balfour helped Alan Breck defend the roundhouse.
Naturally, the first book to put into the hands of the primary school child to be called his own is a good ill.u.s.trated edition of the Mother Goose rhymes. There is nothing to take the place of that acc.u.mulated wisdom of the nursery that is so charming to the ear. He has learned many of the jingles by word of mouth before his school age; but he now needs to own the book himself, read the words, and look at the pictures.
The whole thing must be in one volume for him. But what volume? It is hardly safe to presuppose the possession of these nursery rhyme books before the school age, though that is exactly where they belong. Maybe for this reason it is better to start with the edition of Kate Greenaway that makes up in refinement and delicacy for what it lacks in power and intensity. It is unfortunate that there is no available reprint of the original edition of "Mother Goose"s Melody" compiled by Oliver Goldsmith for John Newbery about 1765, which contained the "most celebrated songs and lullabies of the old British nurses, calculated to amuse children and incite them to sleep." To own such a quaint edition would surely be a delight. Nearly as quaint and delightful, especially the ill.u.s.trations, is the "Only True Mother Goose Melodies" now reprinted from the Boston edition of 1839. Of the editions of recent years there are many good ones, the one appearing under the t.i.tle of "National Rhymes of the Nursery" having superior ill.u.s.trations by Leslie Brooke, but being marred by an artificial arrangement. If some artist with the genius of Cruikshank would give a few of the best years of his life to ill.u.s.trating a complete collection of these rhymes, he would become a benefactor of childhood. And if such an edition were well made mechanically, printed on good unglazed linen paper from large type and good woodcuts, well sewed, and bound in linen or leather, the boy might consider himself favoured of the G.o.ds if he could call such a book his own. These "things that are old and pretty" deserve to be well arrayed.
Yet they deserve to be read for their own sake, an enduring charm of sound. Professor Saintsbury has clearly pointed out that they should never be twisted into an authentic meaning according to the spirit of severest "scientism"; but they should be made "to serve as anthems and doxologies to the G.o.ddess whom in this context it is not satirical to call "Divine Nonsensia," who still in all lands and times condescends now and then to unbind the burden of meaning from the backs and brains of men, and lets them rejoice once more in pure, natural, senseless sound."
After the nursery rhymes, the next volumes for the boy"s book shelf will be collections of fables and fairy tales. The animal fable is easiest to start with, and children like it best as a rule. Talking beasts kindle their imagination and stimulate their awakening powers. Fables are direct, simple, wise, and have a universal appeal. In the delightful first chapter of "The Newcomes," Thackeray tells us that long ages before aesop, a.s.ses under lions" manes roared in Hebrew, sly foxes flattered in Etruscan, and wolves in sheep"s clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit. They are a common inheritance for childhood. The English-speaking child has a number of very good collections at his command, among them being the one recently issued with ill.u.s.trations by Arthur Rackham and another in the New Cranford series ill.u.s.trated by Richard Heighway, and he should surely own the one or the other. But in neither is the drawing quite so charming as is that of Boutet de Monvel for the French fables of La Fontaine.
What a pity that there is no single volume of fairy tales to meet the child"s demands! It should contain the best of the English folk tales, the best of Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Andersen, and others; should have ill.u.s.trations of the merit of Cruikshank"s; should be artistically printed and bound--and it should be a big book. Children love big books.
A child"s book on thin paper and bound in limp leather would not be a child"s book. Coloured ill.u.s.trations are not necessary; children like a few lines in black and white; but it is necessary to have the book a kind of "ponderous tome." Then it can be read on the floor while it rests on the boy"s knees as he sits cross-legged before the fire; or, better still, while he lies on his belly, his chin in his hands and his feet swaying in the air. While he is small, no real boy was ever designed to sit upright on a chair and hold a small book ten inches from his eyes, with the light coming over his left shoulder. Maybe some philanthropic publisher will some day issue a big book of tales to be owned by the boy and read at his ease. But the lack of it to-day necessitates the building up of a fairy library.
The first book to be put into the fairy library might be the charming "Golden Goose Book" of Leslie Brooke, followed by Cruikshank"s "Fairy Book." The Mother Goose tales as first collected by Perrault should now be owned in a well-ill.u.s.trated English translation. On account of their humour and their common everyday tone, the English household and folk tales will make a strong appeal. Scudder"s "Folk Stories," S.
Baring-Gould"s "Old English Fairy Tales," and "Fairy-Gold" by Ernest Rhys are all good in their way; but "English Fairy Tales" by Joseph Jacobs, with its amusing ill.u.s.trations by John Batton, is told in the simplest and most dramatic way, and it should be owned by every boy.
There is one collection of fairy tales that should come into the boy"s possession about the end of the third school year, and that book is the excellent work of the brothers Grimm, whatever be the t.i.tle. The one superior translation is the one made by Edward Taylor about 1826, and a reprint of it issued in 1878, with Cruikshank"s etchings and Ruskin"s introduction. But there are many good and simple translations that are well ill.u.s.trated. After these highly imaginative tales of the German fireside, there should be owned a good translation of the romantic and refined tales of the North, the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
To these stories are many excellent ill.u.s.trations, including those of Stratton, Tegner, and Dulac. It may not be possible and maybe not desirable to own editions of the tales of D"Aulnoy, Laboulaye, Hauff, and others, for the best of their stories may be found in some compilations. Among these are "Mother Goose Nursery Tales" issued by Nister, Andrew Lang"s "Blue Fairy Book," "Big Book of Fairy Tales"
collected by Walter Jerrold, "A Child"s Book of Stories" ill.u.s.trated by Jessie Wilc.o.x Smith and the recently issued attractive edition of "The Fairy Book" by Dinah Maria Mulock. A distinct service could have been rendered to children if Andrew Lang had selected the best of the stories from his voluminous and unequally good colour fairy books and had issued them in one large, well-made volume with artistic ill.u.s.trations.
And yet there remains the greatest and most wonderful of all fairy tales, the "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights," to be begun with the easier tales now, but only to be enjoyed thoroughly in the upper grammar grades. No other book is so romantic or so entrancing, nor does anybody ever get too old to read it. It worked its spell on Coleridge, for he wrote: "Give me the "Arabian Nights" Entertainments" which I used to watch, till the sun shining on the bookcase appeared, and, glowing full upon it, gave me the courage to take it from the shelf." And was it not this book that made wonderful little Marjorie Fleming willing to sleep at the foot of the bed where she could continually read it? The translation made by Edward William Lane in 1839 and ill.u.s.trated by William Harvey under his direction will never be surpa.s.sed; but Jonathan Scott"s translation is easier for the boy to read. Many well-ill.u.s.trated but not always well-edited editions may be found.
Will a boy read "Alice"s Adventures in Wonderland"? Should a boy read "Alice"s Adventures in Wonderland"? Yes and yes! Any boy who cannot enjoy the most delightful fooling that was ever put into a book deserves the greatest of sympathy. He is certainly full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. Where else was there ever such clever and curious nonsense?
What mathematician other than Dodgson ever put before boys and girls such enduring work? It is a case where two and two does not always make four, but it does always make the pleasing thing. Much that goes as serious literature is not half so wise as is the playfulness of this book, nor is it so worthy of being thoroughly known and appreciated. Of course there are a few perpendicular people who see not that it has abiding charms. They cannot double or shake to the mood of its nonsense--nor do they find it grow "curiouser and curiouser" with each reading. Yet it is a cla.s.sic for children, and it is going to endure.
As a general rule, books for children are cast in a rather serious mood.
This is true of the myth and the romantic fairy tale. But the element of humour creeps into the English and the German household tales, for humour is necessary to all earnest living. How far this sense of humour is to be developed is a question hard to answer. This much is true, however: in mature years and under the full responsibility of life, a keen sense of humour is about the only thing that will save a man from himself at times, preserve his balance when he is nearing the borderland of tragedy. Now what is to be the nature of this humour? Is it to be the insipid burlesque that finds its pleasure in the medical almanac and the comic supplement? Or is it to be the kind that wears the sock with brains and taste, the kind that Touchstone has? The latter is the one that sparkles and is worth while. It is the kind that the child starts with in "Alice"s Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Rose and the Ring."
It is the product of men who possess qualities of mind and heart such as Thackeray did. How Shakespeare must have doted on his jesters! And what musical nonsense refrains he wrote.
All this bears out De Quincey"s saying that only a man of extraordinary talent can write nonsense. And nonsense literature is a test of the ability of a reader. Pitt once exclaimed: "Don"t tell me of a man"s being able to talk sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?" Now a child will talk nonsense and delight in it, even if it is nothing but a counting-out rhyme. Then he will come to prefer nonsense of a refined type, innocent and fantastic verse. A book of this kind that he will take a fancy to is Edward Lear"s "Nonsense Songs"; and if it is the edition ill.u.s.trated by Leslie Brooke, he will be grateful when a nonsense mood is on him. Ruskin called it the most beneficent and innocent of all nonsense books. The boy might start with this book, go to "Alice"s Adventures in Wonderland," and then try "The Rose and the Ring." When he reaches the upper grammar grades, he will then enjoy the splendid retelling of "The Adventures of Don Quixote," by Judge Parry, with Walter Crane"s ill.u.s.trations. If he does this, on reaching man"s estate he will keep some favourite translation of this wonderful book of Cervantes in a convenient pocket edition along with his "Pickwick Papers."
Before going to the cla.s.s of books based on myths, one brief work must be mentioned, not only because it marks an epoch in the making of children"s books, but also because it is a child"s cla.s.sic with real merit, and about the only one on such a theme. Nearly all others of this kind are prudish, priggish, and inartistic. This one happens to have a loftiness of tone. Its style is as charming as this whimsical t.i.tle: "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes, otherwise called Mrs. Marjory Two Shoes, the means by which she acquired her learning and wisdom, and in consequence thereof her estate; set forth at large for the benefit of those
"Who from a state of Rags and Care, And having Shoes but half a Pair; Their Fortune and their Fame would fix, And gallop in a Coach and Six."
If any one is in doubt as to who wrote this book, the inscription "to all young gentlemen and ladies who are good, or intend to be good" ought to convince him. Intend to be good, was not that Goldsmith--and the rest of us? An edition of this historic story with pictures after the original woodcuts of 1765 should be in the hands of every child.
Though America"s contribution to children"s literature of an enduring type has been limited, it is gratifying to know that America"s most finished artist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has given to that literature two books that every boy must know, "Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys" and "Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys; a Second Wonder-Book." That every boy who is going to become a mature reader of good books needs to know the myths of Greece and Rome, goes without saying. Now he had better learn these from a book having a literary touch than from the ordinary telling of text-books. For this reason he should completely master these two books by Hawthorne. The ill.u.s.trated edition of the former by Walter Crane and George Wharton Edwards" ill.u.s.trations of the latter are both fine. Not so good as these two, yet necessary, is Charles Kingsley"s "Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children." And the telling of the story of the Odyssey by Charles Lamb in his "Adventures of Ulysses" is good to read, but rather difficult before the last year of the grammar grades. The wonderful exploits of the heroes in the Iliad should be familiar to every boy, and he can get them about all in Bulfinch"s "Age of Fable" as well as anywhere else. This book he must surely own, and whether it is called merely a text-book or not, it is the best work that has yet appeared on the mythology of the world as it is found in cla.s.sical allusions of English books. If he learns the story of the siege of Troy and the return to Ithaca from this book, he may want to hear Chapman speak out loud and bold a few years later.
Does any schoolboy from a home other than one in which Puritan notions yet prevail read "Pilgrim"s Progress"? If he does not, the fault is not in the book. It is as interesting as it is vitally true, and has been positively helpful. According to Macaulay, it has been loved by those too simple to admire it. There is really no such thing as an uninteresting great book. There are uninterested people, though there should not be an uninterested normal boy. If there is, he is a victim of the emasculating process of sugar-coated teaching, parental indulgence, and vaudeville amus.e.m.e.nt. Or maybe he has the habit of the boy"s series, that cuts all characters to the same fashion, the fashion of prudery. In either case he will never be a pilgrim. Of course it would be foolish to insist on a boy"s reading many such books, even if there were more like it written. You might as well insist on seven sermons a week for a man. One in seven days seems often enough to be effective; and one great book like this one, if well mastered, is all that the boy needs. In mature years he can again read it and marvel at its intrinsic greatness and find it something of a reflection of his own experiences in life.
And by having done this he may chance to read such great poetical allegories as the "Faerie Queene" and the "Divine Comedy."
As this allegory of Bunyan"s represented the spiritual experiences of life as the Puritan saw it, so does "Robinson Crusoe" represent the Puritan view of the practical virtues in experience, such as the virtues of prudence, ingenuity, and patience. But for all this it is one of the most fascinating and typical of English stories, and one of the really great ones. Every lad must know this book. Stevenson tells of a Welsh blacksmith who learned to read that he might add this hero to his possibilities of experience.
The third book of that great half-century following the Restoration is one of the few books written to be read by men that has become a child"s cla.s.sic. No wonder Swift afterwards exclaimed, "What a genius I had when I wrote that book!" Yet children read it with pleasure without seeing anything in it but the interesting adventures of Gulliver. Of course, the voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag are the only ones to be given to the boy, and it is unfortunate that publishers have not generally recognized this in issuing "Gulliver"s Travels" for children. It is less necessary to read the other two voyages than it is to read the second part of "Pilgrim"s Progress" and the "Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe."
There is a field of reading very much akin to the field of mythology in which there is no single book that the boy can read that is so permanent in its form as is the "Wonder-Book," yet it is a field in which the boy should feel at home. That is the field that includes the Arthurian legends and the Robin Hood stories. Among the many books that have appeared, the excellent work done by the poet Lanier in his "Boy"s King Arthur" and by the late artist Howard Pyle should surely find a place on every boy"s book shelf. Much of Malory is retained in the former, and the conventional drawings in the latter make a strong appeal despite the widespread mania for colour. The boy who has become attached to his "Age of Fable" might satisfy his curiosity in this romantic field by the almost equally good "Age of Chivalry" and "The Legends of Charlemagne."
At what age should a boy turn to Shakespeare? That depends on the boy.
If he is an average child, he should have something of the plays read to him at a fairly young age; but it is doubtful if he can do much on his own account before the high school age is reached. He might, however, be urged to attempt "A Midsummer-Night"s Dream," "The Tempest," and "King Henry V." At about the age of twelve or fourteen years he should own a good ill.u.s.trated edition in one volume such as the one done by Sir John Gilbert. But be this as it may, he has a right to get something of a glimpse of the wonderful things in these plays through that admirable telling of some of them in Lamb"s "Tales from Shakespeare." Though it may be Lamb instead of Shakespeare, there is no better book of retold stones in English than this work of Thackeray"s "Dear Saint Charles" and his sister Mary.
This brings up the question of the boy"s reading of poetry and the books that he should own. As suggested in a former chapter, the one good collection is Palgrave"s "Children"s Treasury of English Song." There is no second one in this cla.s.s; for all others seem to have some fatal defects of judgment, though they are usually printed in more attractive form. The publishers of this anthology need to issue a well printed, well ill.u.s.trated, and well bound edition, and the book stores need to put it on their shelves, where it is now almost a total stranger. But the approach to such a collection should be gradual. It might start in the second grade with Kate Greenaway"s edition of "Dame Wiggins of Lee and Her Seven Wonderful Cats; a Humorous Tale Written Princ.i.p.ally by a Lady of Ninety," and Caldecott"s "John Gilpin"s Ride." This could be followed with Kate Greenaway"s or Hope Dunlap"s "Pied Piper of Hamelin."
And all children must have Stevenson"s "A Child"s Garden of Verses" with ill.u.s.trations by either Florence Edith Storer or Jessie Wilc.o.x Smith.
Eugene Field"s "Poems of Childhood," ill.u.s.trated by Maxfield Parrish, deserves a place, as does the dainty volume of Blake"s "Songs of Innocence," ill.u.s.trated by Geraldine Morris. If on reaching the upper grammar grades the boy has found pleasure in his "Children"s Treasury of English Song," he might be urged to own complete editions of a few of the poets. The first volume should be the poems of Longfellow, not because of his greatness but because he is the best loved of our noted poets and the easiest one for the boy to read. The next volume should be one of Tennyson, where he will find things actually great. If he comes to prefer "The Pa.s.sing of Arthur" to "Enoch Arden," he is developing taste and judgment and will later enjoy Milton and Wordsworth.
There are two books of recent years, "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book," that have intrinsic worth and charm and should be owned by every boy about his fifth school year. The superior tales are the Mowgli stories, and it is a pity they are not issued in a single volume. Where was there ever a more intense or dramatic story written than "Red Dog"?
How does it happen that teachers seldom give these stories to children, but manage to waste plenty of good time on insipid, made-to-order stories designed to teach mercy to animals? These animal stories for a purpose are like most verse for an occasion--an offence against literary art. Let the boy learn of the charms and the tragedies of animal life in the jungle.
When the boy"s reading shifts toward the romance and the novel, he needs to guard against overreading, indiscriminate reading, and being bewildered by the mult.i.tude of books from which to choose. For a while he had better keep to such books as "The Prince and the Pauper" and "Treasure Island." If he is not at once interested in that plot based on the universal desire to change lots with some one else, or the universal longing to find a hidden treasure, he either has perverted tastes or is without any tastes at all. From these it is an easy step to the forest life of "The Last of the Mohicans" and the life of chivalry presented in "Ivanhoe." He will then surely like that charming story of romantic home life, "Lorna Doone."