Page:Books and men.djvu/79

 Rh associations," and stirring within his soul no stronger impulse than that of a cheaply gratified curiosity.

Not that children's books are to be neglected or contemned. On the contrary, they are always helpful, and in the average nursery have grown to be a recognized necessity. But when supplied with a too lavish hand, a child is tempted to read nothing else, and his mind becomes shrunken for lack of a vigorous stimulant to excite and expand it. "Children," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "derive impulses of a powerful and important kind from hearing things that they cannot entirely comprehend. It is a mistake to write down to their understanding. Set them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out." Sir Walter himself, be it observed, in common with most little people of genius, got along strikingly well without any juvenile literature at all. He shouted the ballad of Hardyknute, to the great annoyance of his aunt's visitors, long before he knew how to read, and listened at his grandmother's knee to her stirring tales about Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and a host of border