[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FROM "COMIC NURSERY TALES" (G. ROUTLEDGE. 1846)]
With the publications of Newbery and Harris, early in the nineteenth century, we encounter examples more nearly typical of the child's book as we regard it to-day. Among them Harris's "Cabinet" is noticeable. The first four volumes, "The Butterfly's Ball," "The Peacock at Home," "The Lion's Masquerade," and "The Elephant's Ball," were reprinted a few years ago, with the original illustrations by Mulready carefully reproduced. A coloured series of sixty-two books, priced at one shilling and sixpence each (Harris), was extremely popular.
With the "Paths of Learning strewed with Flowers, or English Grammar Illustrated" (1820), we encounter a work not without elegance. Its designs, as we see by the examples reproduced on page 9, are the obvious prototype of Miss Greenaway, the model that inspired her to those dainty trifles which conquered even so stern a critic of modern illustration as Mr. Ruskin. On its cover--a forbidding wrapper devoid of ornament--and repeated within a wreath of roses inside, this preamble occurs: "The purpose of this little book is to obviate the reluctance children evince to the irksome and insipid task of learning the names and meanings of the component parts of grammar. Our intention is to entwine roses with instruction, and however humble our endeavour may appear, let it be recollected that the efforts of a Mouse set the Lion free from his toils." This oddly phrased explanation is typical of the affected geniality of the governess. Indeed, it might have been penned by an assistant to Miss Pinkerton, "the Semiramis of Hammersmith"; if not by that friend of Dr. Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself, in a moment of gracious effort to bring her intellect down to the level of her pupils.
To us, this hollow gaiety sounds almost cruel. In those days children were always regarded as if, to quote Mark Twain, "every one being born with an equal amount of original sin, the pressure on the square inch must needs be greater in a baby." Poor little original sinners, how very scurvily the world of books and picture-makers treated you less than a century ago! Life for you then was a perpetual reformatory, a place beset with penalties, and echoing with reproofs. Even the literature planned to amuse your leisure was stuck full of maxims and morals; the most piquant story was but a prelude to an awful warning; pictures of animals, places, and rivers failed to conceal undisguised lessons. The one impression that is left by a study of these books is the lack of confidence in their own dignity which papas and mammas betrayed in the early Victorian era. This seems past all doubt when you realise that the common effort of all these pictures and prose is to glorify the impeccable parent, and teach his or her offspring to grovel silently before the stern law-givers who ruled the home.