by Robert Burns Hardy (?; uncredited).
Originally published in Bentley's Miscellany (Richard Bentley) vol.4 (1838).
It is gratifying to be able to name those authors whose writings first taught us that "books are a substantial world, both pure and good, round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, our pastime and our happiness may grow:" but the names of some of the greatest, the most dearly cherished, the most deservedly popular, are totally unknown to us; and all the gratitude we can display towards their memories must be summed up in a pleasant recollection of their works, and of the impressions which these left upon our young minds. The names of Blind Harry, Cervantes, De Foe, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, we can easily associate with the productions of their separate minds; but who can tell us of the authors of the Life and Death of Little Cock Robin, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack and the Bean-stalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb, Fortunatus, Wise Willie and Witty Eppie, the Merry Tricks of Leper the Tailor, Paddy from Cork, and a hundred other imperishable productions, the perusal of which in boyhood lent a luxurious charm to that period of existence which we can never know again? What is fame, and what is authorship, when the names of these great benefactors of the human race are, and ever were, unknown?
Ample justice has no doubt been done to these anonymous masters by the voice of common fame: their works are familiar to our minds as household gods: but, strange to say, their unquestionable excellences have never yet been lectured upon in philosophical and literary institutions, and our periodical literature has hitherto left them to stand upon their own merit. There is a deep injustice in all this, which the growing intelligence of the age must speedily dispel.
Of these masters it is not too much to say that they were the fathers of circulating libraries, and of that multitudinous race of authors whose imagination is never obscured by the judgment. The productions of their imitators, however, are not to be compared, in any respect, with the things imitated. True, they both address themselves to our credulity, and our love of the marvellous; but the one attains its object, and something more, while the other falls short of it. There is a greater polish about the one, to the sacrifice of improbability; while there is a greater strength about the other, and a bold fearlessness, that displays true genius unfettered, untrammelled, uncontrolled. In short, we are inclined to claim for these great anonymous authors a high niche in the temple of fame, and we challenge the most rigid investigation of those pretensions which we mean to urge in their favour.
Our authors may be classified as tragic and comic, or pathetic and humorous, and biographical. To the first class belong the authors of Little Red Riding Hood, and the Life and Death of Little Cock Robin. Riding Hood has been the model of an entire school of literature by itself. We may trace some of our most popular novels and successful melodramas to this source. The story is unexceptionable; and the heroine is as perfect a creation of innocence and true charity as Pamela herself. As for the rascal who gobbles her up, it is a well-known fact that he is the bastard son of Glo'ster, in King Lear; and, although Stevens does not acknowledge this in his notes upon Shakspeare, he evidently suspects something of the sort. Cock Robin, again, has been the foundation of what is now called the Thurtell and Weare school of literature. It is a tale of wilful, cold-blooded murder. The principal actor in this awful tragedy, with a truth to nature which could scarcely have been expected of him, boasts of his crime, and even mentions the weapons with which he accomplished his diabolical purpose, in language that conveys to the ear of the hearer a perfect picture of the innate depravity of the murderer's heart:—
"'Who killed Cock Robin?'
'I,' says the Sparrow, 'with my bow and arrow,
And I killed Cock Robin.'"
We have nothing equal to this in the Newgate Calendar.
Cock Robin, indeed, is deeply calculated to rivet the attention, and to raise in the human mind a detestation of sanguinary and gratuitous crime. The whole affair, as Lord Brougham ably and justly remarks, "smells of blood." Every circumstance connected with the murder is powerfully brought forward. The fly, with her little eye, saw Cock Robin die; the fish, with her little dish, caught Cock Robin's blood; the bull, who could pull, rung his passing bell; and he was carried to his grave amid weeping, and lamentation, and mourning, and woe. Such, indeed, has been the effect of this powerful production on the popular mind, that the sparrow has for centuries been regarded as another Cain: and, before we question the injustice of this, let us take into consideration the fact that Cock Robin was one of the most amiable and praiseworthy characters that we know of in history. He it was who "happed the bonnie babes wi' leaves frae head to feet;' and that is a circumstance that can never be erased from our most tender recollections.
Of the tragic or pathetic in our anonymous masters we are inclined to speak in terms of the highest praise. In them there is no overstraining for effect, no superfluous and merely wordy matter; nothing is introduced but what is absolutely necessary to be known. In them, too, there is a generous disdain of the probabilities, which makes them outstrip the romances of faëry land. Whatever is proper to be known they make us acquainted with; whatever ought to be observed, or kept in the background, gets no patronage from them. As artists, and as great artists, their delineations belong to the highest rank of art. There is no mistaking them. They work with a bold, broad pencil; and the effect produced is graphic and great. We see the fish with her little dish, and the fly with his little eye, and the bull with his mighty pull, staring vividly from the canvass, as if there were no other objects in nature. This is the true triumph of art.
We have been led insensibly to speak of the pictorial art, and this reminds us that these authors have filled the world with pictures. To them, unquestionably, we are indebted for that noble assemblage of portraits, the Crooked Family, better, and more endeared to our imaginations and our memories than any royal family in the world. They also brought under the burin Mr. Punch and Mrs. Judy, and their whole progeny—worthy of their progenitors. Riding Hood is a stereotyped portrait in every modern exhibition, and Edwin Landseer thinks of immortalizing Little Cock Robin in the very next season.
But genius does not always exhibit itself in gigantic efforts: Shakspeare enjoyed himself in a tavern, and Milton on a swing. So our authors condescended occasionally to be less than men—only that they might be more than men. The author of Jack the Giant Killer is supposed to have been a member of the Anti-Duellist Society; and the author of the Merry Tricks of Leper the Tailor amused his leisure hours by ringing a hand-bell, and announcing sales and losses at the cross of Glasgow. It is idle and useless to lament over the vagaries of genius, for, however absurd these may seem to the fastidious or the profane vulgar, they are only indices that the beings who practise them belong to our common humanity.
One feature that distinguishes these authors from all others is their creative power, as exhibited in their separate works. It was only necessary for them to conceive, to create and execute. Their imaginations were fertile even to pruriency. The finest example we have of this, perhaps, is Jack and the Bean-stalk. The hero plants his bean in the luxurious soil, and in a single night it grows up until it penetrates the clouds; and, as if this were not sufficient, it penetrates that precise spot of vapour in which is the commencement of a turnpike road leading to a goodly castle,—which, we presume, was one of those beautiful castles in the air which are sometimes sneeringly spoken of by the unbelieving and the incredulous. This piece is indeed a great effort of human genius, although it "seems like lies disdained in the reporting." The author never pauses or hesitates in his romantic tale. His hero whisks in and out of a keyhole, and performs the most marvellous actions in the same spirit of breathless rapidity exhibited by the bean itself in its growth. This same spirit is amply displayed in the works of all these unknown masters. The classic reader will recal many instances for himself; but we may barely mention the seven league boots; the wishing-cap and purse of the thrice fortunate Fortufiatus; and the coat of darkness, the shoes of swiftness, and the sword of sharpness of the valiant Jack the Giant-Killer.
We have hitherto spoken of these authors and of their works with that respect which has been inspired by a careful and critical consideration of their real merits; but we would be wanting in common gratitude could we close the subject without expressing somewhat of the pleasure we have enjoyed from the bare recollection of that period of our existence which was sweetened by the anxious perusal of such things. Well do we remember the time when we first got acquainted with Cinderella and her little glass-slippers; and we can yet fancy the dropping pearls from the lips of that young lady who, in graciously dispensing water to a disguised fairy at a well, was endowed with this miraculous and not unpleasing power, while her ill-natured sister was rewarded with a perpetual gush of toads and serpents. Bluebeard comes also across our imagination, and the fatal chamber we see in all its horrors. We still listen to that distressing and oft-repeated question, "Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see anybody coming?" we know its tone, and can recognize it above the rustling of the winds. Aladdin, with his wonderful lamp, carries us to the rich and gorgeous east; and that serves to recal to us the treasures contained in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
The books of boyhood are the best dreams of life: they realize to our young imaginations all the happiness that Don Quixote ever enjoyed from his dream of knight-errantry,—from which it was a cruelty to attempt ever to awaken him. We have learned few better things since, for they made us walk as if in a world of bright imaginings, peopled with everything that could excite the mind to entertain high and romantic and generous and noble thoughts; they were the prompters to fine feelings, and to gallant deeds of daring.