De Libris: Prose and Verse Part 4

"Emam tua carmina sa.n.u.s?"--MARTIAL.

F. OF H. I want a verse. It gives you little pains;-- You just sit down, and draw upon your brains.

Come, now, be amiable.

R. To hear you talk, You'd make it easier to fly than walk.

You seem to think that rhyming is a thing You can produce if you but touch a spring;

That fancy, fervour, pa.s.sion--and what not,

Are just a case of "penny in the slot."

You should reflect that no evasive bird Is half so shy as is your fittest word; And even similes, however wrought, Like hares, before you cook them, must be caught;--

Impromptus, too, require elaboration, And (unlike eggs) grow fresh by incubation; Then,--as to epigrams,..

F. of H. Nay, nay, I've done.

I did but make pet.i.tion. You make fun.

R. Stay. I am grave. Forgive me if I ramble: But, then, a negative needs some preamble To break the blow. I feel with you, in truth, These complex miseries of Age and Youth; I feel with you--and none can feel it more Than I--this burning Problem of the Poor; The Want that grinds, the Mystery of Pain, The Hearts that sink, and never rise again;-- How shall I set this to some careless screed, Or jigging stave, when Help is what you need, Help, Help,--more Help?

F. of H. I fancied that with ease You'd scribble off some verses that might please, And so give help to us.

R. Why then--TAKE THESE!

THE PARENT'S a.s.sISTANT

One of the things that perplexes the dreamer--for, in spite of the realists, there are dreamers still--is the almost complete extinction of the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable, full-wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding-places in n.o.blemen's collections, where, unless--with the _Chrysostom_ in Pope's verses--they are used for the smoothing of bands or the pressing of flowers, no one ever disturbs their drowsy diuturnity. Their bulk makes them sacred: like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246 pages, price eighteenpence, "Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot, in S. Dunstans Church-yard, Fleetstreet" in 1653, which const.i.tutes the _editio princeps_ of Walton's _Angler_. Probably they were worn out in the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake and c.o.c.kle in the sunny corners of wasp-haunted alehouse windows, or dropped in the deep gra.s.s by some casual owner, more careful for flies and caddis-worms, or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle, than all the "choicely-good" madrigals of Maudlin the milkmaid. In any case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint "coppers" of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for them. And that other eighteenpenny book, put forth by "_Nath. Ponder_ at the _Peac.o.c.k_ in the _Poultrey_ near _Cornhil_" five and twenty years later,--_The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That which is to come_,--why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite perfect, now extant, of which the best sold not long since for more than 1400? Of these five, the first that came to light had been preserved owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great library, where it was forgotten. But the others that pa.s.sed over Mr.

Ponder's counter in the Poultry,--were they all lost, thumbed and dog's-eared out of being? They are gone,--that is all you can say; and gone apparently beyond reach of recovery.

These remarks,--which scarcely rise to the dignity of reflections--have been suggested by the difficulty which the writer has experienced in obtaining particulars as to the earliest form of the _Parent's a.s.sistant_. As a matter of course, children's books are more liable to disappear than any others. They are sooner torn, soiled, dismembered, disintegratedsooner find their way to that mysterious unlocated limbo of lost things, which engulfs so much. Yet one scarcely expected that even the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can scarcely--outside private collections--be very easily accessible.

Fortunately the old _Monthly Review_ for September, 1796, with most exemplary forethought for posterity, gives, as a heading to its notice, a precise and very categorical account of the first impression. _The Parent's a.s.sistant; or, Stories for Children_ was, it appears, published in two parts, making three small duodecimo volumes. The price, bound, was six s.h.i.+llings. There was no author's name; but it was said to be "by E.M." (i.e. Edgeworth, Maria), and the publisher was Cowper's Dissenter publisher, Joseph Johnson of No. 72, St. Paul's Churchyard. Part I.

contained "The Little Dog Trusty; or, The Liar and the Boy of Truth"; "The Orange Man; or, the Honest Boy and the Thief"; "Lazy Lawrence"; "Tarleton"; and "The False Key"; Part II., "The Purple Jar," "The Bracelets," "Mademoiselle Panache," "The Birthday Present," "Old Poz,"

and "The Mimic." In the same year, 1796, a second edition appeared, apparently with, some supplementary stories, e.g.: "Barring Out," and in 1800 came a third edition in six volumes. In this the text was increased by "Simple Susan," "The Little Merchants," "The Basket Woman," "The White Pigeon," "The Orphans," "Waste Not, Want Not," "Forgive and Forget," and "Eton Montem." One story, "The Purple Jar" at the beginning of Part II. of the first edition, was withdrawn, and afterwards included in another series, while the stories ent.i.tled respectively "Little Dog Trusty" and "The Orange Man" have disappeared from the collection, probably for the reason given in one of the first prefaces, namely, that they "were written for a much earlier age than any of the others, and with such a perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear insipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly laudatory; and his commendations show that the early critics of the author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities, "The moral and prudential lessons of these volumes," says the writer, "are judiciously chosen; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are happily contrived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling without the aid of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felicity to the understandings of children. The author's taste, in this cla.s.s of writing, appears to have been formed on the best models; and the work will not discredit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's _Child's Friend_, Mrs. Barbauld's _Lessons for Children_, and Dr. Aikin's _Evenings at Home_. The story of 'Lazy Lawrence'"--the notice goes on--"is one of the best lectures on industry which we have ever read.

"The _Critical Review_, which also gave a short account of the _Parent's a.s.sistant_ in its number for January 1797, does not rehea.r.s.e the contents. But it confirms the t.i.tle, etc., adding that the price, in boards, was 4s. 6d.; and its praise, though brief, is very much to the point. "The present production is particularly sensible and judicious; the stories are well written, simple, and affecting; calculated, not only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the human heart."

With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards format, to a.s.sociate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as _Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the t.i.tle." Her father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson [the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The Parent's a.s.sistant_, which I dislike particularly, from a.s.sociation with an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's a.s.sistant_." The ground of objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's a.s.sistant_ is certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it, practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_; upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance.

This was her first essay in fiction; and it was p.r.o.nounced by the judge to whom it was submitted,--in compet.i.tion with a rival production by a young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be answered now, as the ma.n.u.script has not been preserved, though the inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained "a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his horse." This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed herself, since her style, as her first reviewer allowed, is conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speaking and writing had, indeed, been early impressed upon her. Her father's doctrinaire ally and co-disciplinarian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of _Sandford and Merton_, and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that "he talked like a book," had been indefatigable in bringing this home to his young friend, when she visited him in her London school-days. Not content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berkeley's Tar Water--the chosen beverage of Young and Richardson--he was unwearied in ministering to her understanding. "His severe reasoning and uncompromising love of truth awakened her powers, and the questions he put to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not always agreeable, she even then perceived its advantages, and in after life was deeply grateful to Mr. Day."[22]

Note:

[22] _Maria Edgeworth_, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13.

The training she underwent from the inexorable Mr, Day was continued by her father when she quitted school, and moved with her family to the parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose principles were as rigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in short, to act as his agent and factotum. She frequently accompanied him in the many disputes and difficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry; and, apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the character and idiosyncrasies of the people, she no doubt very early acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest factors which is a noticeable feature even of her children's books.[23]

It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to "Generosity"; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation of the _Adele et Theodore_ of Madame de Genlis, those letters upon education by which that gentle and multifarious moralist acquired--to use her own words--at once "the suffrages of the public, and the irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their partisans." At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr, Edgeworth's mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered strength; and he began to prepare his daughter's ma.n.u.script for the press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft's complete translation appeared, and made the labour needless. Yet it was not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss Edgeworth's faculty of expression, and increasing her vocabulary--to say nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of Madame de Genlis's most well-known work, may have had on her own subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile her mentor, Mr. Day, was delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full, that rooted antipathy to feminine authors.h.i.+p of which we find so many traces in Miss Burney's novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of having a translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had not become the author of _Sandford and Merton_, which, as a matter of fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply intended as a short story to be inserted in the _Harry and Lucy_ Mr.

Edgeworth wrote in conjunction with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although sensible of Mr. Day's prejudices, appear to have deferred to his arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed that, in Miss Edgeworth's first book, ten years later, the _Letters to Literary Ladies,_ she employed and embodied much that he had advanced.

But for the present, she continued to write--though solely for her private amus.e.m.e.nt--essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of these last must have been "Old Poz," a pleasant study of a country justice and a _gazza ladra_, which appeared in Part II. of the first issue of the _Parent's a.s.sistant_, and which, we are told, was acted by the Edgeworth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth's practice first to write her stories on a slate, and then to read them out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. "Her writing for children"--says one of her biographers--"was a natural outgrowth of a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of several little brothers and sisters." According to her own account, her first critic was her father. "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I always told him [my father] my first rough plans; and always, with the instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose.--'_Sketch that, and shew it to me._'--These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected--'I don't want any of your painting--none of your drapery!--I can imagine all that--let me see the bare skeleton.'"

Note:

[23] Cf. "Attorney Case" in the story of "Simple Susan."

Of the first issue of the _Parent's a.s.sistant_ in 1796, a sufficient account has already been given. In the "Preface" the practical intention of several of the stories is explicitly set forth. "Lazy Lawrence," we are told, ill.u.s.trates the advantages of industry, and demonstrates that people feel cheerful and happy whilst they are employed; while "Tarleton" represents "the danger and the folly of that weakness of mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pa.s.s for good nature"; "The False Key" points out some of the evils to which a well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the profligacy of his fellow-servants; "The Mimic," the drawback of vulgar acquaintances; "Barring Out," the errors to which a high spirit and the love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph stress is laid upon what every fresh reader must at once recognise as the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary; and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the finish,--a surprise which is only to be compared to that other revelation in _The Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray, where the long-lost and obnoxious porter at Valoroso's palace, having been turned by the Fairy Blackstick into a door knocker for his insolence, is restored to the sorrowing Servants' Hall exactly when his services are again required in the capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuffs husband. But in Miss Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. "Fairies were not much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but philanthropic manufacturers, liberal n.o.blemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to distribute rewards or to point a moral."

Note:

[24] The "Preface to Parents"--Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me--was probably by Mr. Edgeworth.

Although, by their sub-t.i.tle, these stories are avowedly composed for children, they are almost as attractive to grown-up readers. This is partly owing to their narrative skill, partly also to the clear characterisation, which already betrays the coming author of _Castle Rackrent_ and _Belinda_ and _Patronage_--the last, under its first name of _The Freeman Family_, being already partly written, although many years were still to pa.s.s before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the personages in the _Parent's a.s.sistant_ that the author, however sedulous to describe "such situations only ... as children can easily imagine,"

was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of human nature like the bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the burglar butler in "The False Key," or Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper of the same story, whose prejudices against the _Villaintropic_ Society, and its unholy dealing with the "_drugs and refuges_" of humanity, are quite in the style of the Mrs.

Slipslop of a great artist whose works one would scarcely have expected to encounter among the paper-backed and grey-boarded volumes which lined the shelves at Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Theresa Tattle, again, in "The Mimic," is a type which requires but little to fit it for a subordinate part in a novel, as is also Lady Diana Sweepstakes in "Waste not, Want not." In more than one case, we seem to detect an actual portrait. Mr.

Somerville of Somerville ("The White Pigeon"), to whom that "little town" belonged,--who had done so much "to inspire his tenantry with a taste for order and domestic happiness, and took every means in his power to encourage industrious, well-behaved people to settle in his neighbourhood,"--can certainly be none other than the father of the writer of the _Parent's a.s.sistant_, the busy and beneficent, but surely eccentric, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown.

When, in 1849, the first two volumes of Macaulay's _History_ were issued, Miss Edgeworth, then in her eighty-third winter, was greatly delighted to find her name, coupled with a compliment to one of her characters, enshrined in a note to chap. vi. But her gratification was qualified by the fact that she could discover no similar reference to her friend, Sir Walter Scott. The generous "twinge of pain," to which she confesses, was intelligible. Scott had always admired her genius, and she admired his. In the "General Preface" to the _Waverley Novels_, twenty years before, he had gone so far as to say that, without hoping to emulate "the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact" of Miss Edgeworth, he had attempted to do for his own country what she had done for hers; and it is clear, from other sources, that this was no mere form of words. And he never wavered in his admiration. In his last years, not many months before his death, when he had almost forgotten her name, he was still talking kindly of her work. Speaking to Mrs. John Davy of Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier, he said: "And there's that Irish lady, too--but I forget everybody's name now" ... "she's _very_ clever, and best in the little touches too. I'm sure in that children's story, where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it back to her again, there's nothing for it but just to put down the book and cry."[25] The reference is to "Simple Susan," the longest and prettiest tale in the _Parent's a.s.sistant_.

Note:

[25] Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, ch. lx.x.xi. _ad finem_.

Another anecdote pleasantly connects the same book with a popular work of a later writer. Readers of _Cranford_ will recall the feud between the Johnson-loving Miss Jenkyns of that story and its _Pickwick_-loving Captain Brown. The Captain--as is well-known--met his death by a railway accident, just after he had been studying the last monthly "green covers" of d.i.c.kens. Years later, the a.s.sumed narrator of _Cranford_ visits Miss Jenkyns, then faliing into senility. She still vaunts _The Rambler_; still maunders vaguely of the "strange old book, with the queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading-that book by Mr.

Boz, you know--_Old Poz_; when I was a girl--but that's a long time ago--I acted Lucy in _Old Poz_." There can be no mistake. Lucy is the justice's daughter in Miss Edgeworth's little chamber-drama.

A PLEASANT INVECTIVE AGAINST PRINTING

"Flee fro the PREES, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."--CHAUCER, _Balade de Bon Conseil_.

The Press is too much with us, small and great: We are undone of chatter and _on dit_, Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, Aspect of A., and att.i.tude of B.-- A waste of words that drive us like a sea, Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight!

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"

Some region unapproachable of Print, Where never cablegram could gain access, And telephones were not, nor any hint Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe His soul to Nature,--careless of the Type!

TWO MODERN BOOK ILl.u.s.tRATORS

I. KATE GREENAWAY