Children's books, as every collector knows, are among the most short-lived of all volumes. This is more especially true of those with illustrations, for their extra attractiveness serves but to degrade a comely book into a dog-eared and untidy thing, with leaves sere and yellow, and with no autumnal grace to mellow their decay. Long before this period, however, the nursery artist has marked them for his own, and with crimson lake and Prussian blue stained their pictures in all too permanent pigments, that in some cases resist every chemical the amateur applies with the vain hope of effacing the superfluous colour.
Of course the disappearance of the vast majority of books for children (dating from 1760 to 1830, and even later) is no loss to art, although among them are some few which are interesting as the 'prentice work of illustrators who became famous. But these are the exceptions. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. James Stone, of Birmingham, who has a large and most interesting collection of the most ephemeral of all sorts—the little penny and twopenny pamphlets—it has been possible to refer at first hand to hundreds, of them. Yet, despite their interest as curiosities, their art need not detain us here. The pictures are mostly trivial or dull, and look like the products of very poorly equipped draughtsmen and cheap engravers. Some, in pamphlet shape, contain nursery rhymes and little stories, others are devoted to the alphabet and arithmetic. Amongst them are many printed on card, shaped like the cover of a bank-book. These were called battledores, but as Mr. Tuer has dealt with this class in "The Horn Book" so thoroughly, it would be mere waste of time to discuss them here.
Mr. Elkin Mathews also permitted me to run through his interesting collection, and among them were many noted elsewhere in these pages, but the rest, so far as the pictures are concerned, do not call for detailed notice. They do, indeed, contain pictures of children—but mere "factual" scenes, as a rule—without any real fun or real imagination. Those who wish to look up early examples will find a large and entertaining variety among "The Pearson Collection" in the National Art Library at South Kensington Museum.
Turning to quite another class, we find "A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies" (Collins: Salisbury), a typical volume of its kind. Its preface begins: "I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasure and diversions. … The greater part of our British youth lose their figure and grow out of fashion by the time they are twenty-five. As soon as the natural gaiety and amiableness of the young man wears off they have nothing left to recommend, but lie by the rest of their lives among the lumber and refuse of their species"—a promising start for a moral lecture, which goes on to implore those who are in the flower of their youth to "labour at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone."
The compensations for old age appear to be, according to this author, a little knowledge of grammar, history, astronomy, geography, weights and measures, the seven wonders of the world, burning mountains, and dying words of great men. But its delightful text must not detain us here. A series of "cuts" of national costumes with which it is embellished deserves to be described in detail. An American Man and Woman in their proper habits, reproduced on page 6, will give a better idea of their style than any words. The blocks evidently date many years earlier than the thirteenth edition here referred to, which is about 1790. Indeed, those of the Seven Wonders are distinctly interesting.
Here and there we meet with one interesting as art. "An Ancestral History of King Arthur" (H. Roberts, Blue Boar, Holborn, 1782), shown in the Pearson collection at South Kensington, has an admirable frontispiece; and one or two others would be worth reproduction did space permit.
Although the dates overlap, the next division of the subject may be taken as ranging from the publication of "Goody Two Shoes—otherwise called Mrs. Margaret Two-shoes"—to the "Bewick Books." Of the latter the most interesting is unquestionably "A Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses, or Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds," with a familiar description of each in verse and prose, to which is prefixed "A History of Little Tom Trip himself, of his dog Towler, and of Coryleg the great giant," written for John Newbery, the philanthropic bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard. "The fifteenth edition embellished with charming engravings upon wood, from the original blocks engraved by Thomas Bewick for T. Saint of Newcastle in 1779"—to quote the full title from the edition reprinted by Edwin Pearson in 1867. This edition contains a preface tracing the history of the blocks, which are said to be Bewick's first efforts to depict beasts and birds, undertaken at the request of the New castle printer, to illustrate a new edition of "Tommy Trip." As at this time copyright was unknown, and Newcastle or Glasgow pirated a London success (as New York did but lately), we must not be surprised to find that the text is said to be a reprint of a "Newbery" publication. But as Saint was called the Newbery of the North, possibly the Bewick edition was authorised. One or two of the rhymes which have been attributed to Oliver Goldsmith deserve quotation. Appended to a cut of The Bison we find the following delightful lines:
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