ledge, inſignificant and vapid as Mrs Barbauld's books convey, it ſeems muſt come to a child in the ſhape of knowledge; and his empty noddle muſt be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horſe is an animal, and Billy is better than a horſe, and ſuch like, inſtead of that beautiful intereſt in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he ſuſpected himſelf to be no bigger than a child. Science has ſucceeded to poetry no leſs in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no poſſibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if inſtead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!
'Hang them!—I mean the curſed Barbauld
