out in haste and confusion, just as a girl would most likely do it. That there must be real ability in Mrs. Teach'em, and that she was not without her effect, we gather from the existence of a feeble little imitation—where, by the bye, Goody Two Shoes is spoken of with magnificent scorn-and likewise from this idea having evidently suggested that of Mrs. Leicester's School, by Mary Lamb-to say nothing of Mrs. Sherwood's adaptation to her own Evangelical style, in the course of which she has introduced one admirable fairy tale. The next three stories, Jemima Placid, the Perambulations of a Mouse, and the Village School, were the delight of our earlier days. We knew them in a renewed edition, but we have since been favoured with a sight of them in their native form, little thin duodecimos, in paper covers, gilt and flowered over. They are printed by John Marshall, but bear no date. They were however, with their companions, the Adventures of a Peg-top, the History of a Pincushion, and the History of a Great Many Little Boys and Girls, written between 1770 and 1790, just when Mrs. Trimmer was giving an impetus to children's literature. When any initials of the author are given they are M.P., but these stood for the place of her residence, Maryland Point, near Stratford. Female authorship was so dreadful a matter in those days that the strictest incognito was preserved by the writer; and, when her publisher wished at least for a nom de plume, she adopted that of Mary Pelham. Though Mrs. Trimmer overlooked many of her works in MS., it was long before she was allowed to know the true name of the writer, but afterwards the two ladies became intimate friends. The real name was Dorothy Kilner; it was that of her whole life, for she never married; and from four years old to eighty-one lived at Maryland Point, where, as her brother's children grew up round her, she became an author on their behalf. She died on the 5th of February, 1836. I am indebted for these particulars to one of her surviving nieces, who has kindly allowed me to make them known, in the belief that there are some few even of mothers and aunts who may be glad to learn the source of their early favourites. The History of a Great Many Little Boys and Girls is so infantine that I durst not introduce it here, but it is in some respects the drollest of all. Miss Mary Anne Selfish is summarily cured of greediness by being made to sit in the pigstye, and Tommy Piper, when crying 'I won't be washed, has his nursery invaded by Mr. Make Good, to have his ablutions completed in the waterbutt in the yard, where the illustration represents him, a miserable spectacle, Mr. Make Good standing over him in a cocked hat. This worthy, by the bye, we have found as Monsieur Réforme in the French translation in the Lectures graduées. These must have edified the nephews and nieces in their younger days; but there is much more individual character in some of the latter stories, especially in the Village School. There, be it observed, there is no separation of ranks, nor partiality in the treatment of the flocks, and the touches of manners are very amusing. 'With cuts, these books were always advertised; cuts that did duty again and again, always of wainscoted rooms, and high-back chairs, and girls with long waists, sleeves down to the elbow, neat little aprons, round caps indoors, and shepherdess hats out of doors. Their mammas have high mob caps at home and hats abroad; the clergymen promenade in gown, bands, wigs, and shovel hats. The drollest bit of costume is in the History of a Pincushion, where one Sally Flaunt, being invited to a tenant's feast, disdains a ‘garnet coloured stuff' given her by her good aunt, and repairs to a barn to array herself in a silk coat, with a tall smart cap much the worse for wear, and a cushion, over which to roll her hair. A triangular bit of lookinglass is her toilette apparatus, and her confidant her cousin Jack, who treacherously completes her headgear with some streamers of straw and a couple of dangling sheep's feet. The two illustrations of this scene are capital, and we learn, by the bye, that boarding schools near London were even then pernicious to the good sense of farmers' daughters. Mrs. Dorothy Kilner wrote other books of a more advanced style, but we have only seen one, in which a squire expounds a gallery of paintings on sacred subjects every Sunday to a circle of friends, who appear to be about as well acquainted with scripture as the London fashionables who asked Sir Joshua Reynolds who Samuel was. Of the story of the Little Queen we know nothing except that it was, together with Philip Quarll, Little Jack, Cowper's John Gilpin, Pope's Universal Prayer, and some others of minor account, in a book called the Children's Miscellany. It may have been a satire in its own time, for the Little Queen's political economy is not very unlike that of Louis XV. Any way, when I was innocent of any such suspicion, I thought it an amusing story. Little Jack is by Thomas Day, the eccentric doctrinaire, who wrote Sandford and Merton, studied education with Richard Edgeworth, and failed so deliciously in the Lucinda and Sabrina he brought up, intending to have a choice of model wives. No doubt Jack is intended to show the superiority of natural to artificial breeding; but that does not prevent it from being a pleasant, lively story, with a good deal of the mark of talent about it. Would that we could present the modern reader with the picture of Jack, habited like a Chelsea pensioner, cooking his dinner under a rock. The pictorial art of story books was at a low ebb then, though, we believe, it inspired quite as much admiration in young people it was designed for, as do in their turn taste. the really beautiful illustrations that act as training to eye and Unadorned, however, I send forth this Storehouse, curious to see whether the verdict of the present race of readers will discover interest in the tales that were charming to at least two past generations. March 1870. CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. |