night and silence"[1] which Mr. Hawthorne has been called. It is meagre, hasty, and without distinctive merit of any kind. Prejudiced in his favour, we read it with full purpose of heart to like it exceedingly, and to find an immense deal in it; but it baffled us outright, and we could only conclude that, like bonus Homerus, this our bonus Albaspinus may be caught quandoque dormitans.
A word or two, however, ere we leave him, upon his more genial and satisfactory contributions to the Literature of Childhood. The "Wonder-Book," like most true books for children, has a charm for their grave and reverend seniors. These old-world myths of Pandora and Midas, and Baucis and Philemon, are related with the poetical simplicity and good faith which is their due, and the due of all child-auditors. Mr. Hawthorne loves and understands, and is loved and understood by, what Wordsworth calls
Real children: not too wise.
Too learned, or too good.[2]
Do you remember "Little Annie's Ramble" in "Twice-told Tales?"—where he tells us that if he prides himself on anything, it is because he has a smile that children love—and that few are the grown ladies that could entice him from the side of such as little Annie, so deep is his delight in letting his mind go hand in hand with the mind of a sinless child. For he wisely holds and sweetly teaches that, as the pure breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple thoughts, their native feeling, their fury mirth, for little cause or none, their grief, soon roused and soon allayed. And he maintains, with a fervour and an experto crede decision that would have won him Jean Paul's benison, that the influence of these little ones upon us is at least reciprocal with ours on them—and that when life settles darkly down upon us, and we doubt whether to call ourselves young any more, then it is good to steal away from the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an hour or two with children. Here is the genuine man for inditing a "Wonder-Book" for small people. Woe worth the "once upon a time" when, says the collector of "Yule-Tide Stories," there were no Popular Tales—adding, "and a sad time it was for children."[3] And a sad time it promised to be for children
- ↑ An American visitor at Emerson's Monday soirées, at which a "Congress of Oracles" held séances to the admiration of "curious listeners," and all ate russet apples in perfect good fellowship, describes Miles Coverdale as sitting, a little removed, under a portrait of Dante—"a statue of night and silence," gazing imperceptibly upon the parliamentary group; "and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and eyes made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into hit stories." Such was his contribution to the conversazione. But a Liverpool consulate will surely test his taciturnity.
- ↑ "Prelude." Book V.
- ↑ See the "Birth of the Popular Tale," forming the introduction to Mr. Thorpe's "Yule-Tide Stories," a collection of tales and traditions of the north of Europe (Bohn, 1853). In which story we are pleasantly taught how two royal children, representing human beings in general, while inhabiting a magnificent domain, are ill at ease, with a vague sense of longing; which is at length relieved by their mother's inwardly wishing for some miraculous antidote to their complaint. This comes in the shape of a beautiful bird, from whose "golden green and golden blue" egg is hatched "the parti-coloured, winged, littering delight of childhood, itself a child, the wondrous bird Imagination, the Popular Tale." And now the mother (Nature) saw her children no longer sad. They contracted an ardent love
