THE CHILD IMAGINATION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1455, 1 June 1912, Page 9

THE CHILD IMAGINATION.

jj Some of.the most curious and interest-; rng pages Jn • the, deJightfuJJgiJqltfnle or' Keniiniscenccs" which Air. James '-Stuart' has just published are those'which'concern his early acquaintance :wirh literature. He hail the good fortune 'tb have both a mother and grandmother of literary tastes, and they—and especially the latter—not only stored him with: ballad lore and told him tales of the. French Kevolntion from the Girondist point of view, but, before he was nine years old, hull familiarised him with the poetry of Byron, Scott, Jloe-rc, and Campbell, and put him through Pope's translation of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," Drydens of Virgil, and .Kowe's of Lucan's "Phar6ali'.i." Jn-the editions at-.his djspoHil' he seems sometimes to. have b'eeri'as fortunate as Mr. I'-redcric, Harrison. , . Thus, his Virgil and.his "Phavsalia." were in yery large folio volumes, c(uite colossal, ■with thide'paper and magnificent print, and interleaved with whole-page wood engravings, which greatly delighted him, as they were mostly of battles and of gods. "The gods sat upon very solid-look-ing clouds, and at .'that time ■ I don't think it would have surprised mo to,see Jupiter looking over the sides of- a real cloud. I remember at that time. I formed a theory for my own 1 satisfaction of clouds—namely, tli.vt they were a skin of smoke with water inside;" Naturally at that ago he did not see deeply into hidden meanings in literature, and he read the "Pilgrim's Progress" without discerning the allegory. Nevertheless, read only as a fairy he was an insatiable devourer of fairy tales it filled him ■ with pleasure, and the giants and .Apollyon, being of kin with Jack the Giant Killer aiid his victims, gave him the greatest delight. ■ ■ ' The- manner in which children visualise the suggestions of poets is often, extremely odd, and the best instance one remembers is given in that passage- of "Rosa quo Locorum" in which Stevenson .explains what the phrases in. the ■ 23rd 'j'salm, "Death's dark vale" and "Thy rod and Thy staff," meant, to him in his .childhood; but Mr. Stunrt's are excellent also. Thus the line about the "fountain filled with: Wood" called up a pool at. the •foot of a high hill, on the top of the hill a chnrtih, and round the church a .crowd performing.upon harps.. Such images have a w\y of persisting; and in Mr. Stuart's case to this day not only does many a. line suggest an incongruous picture, but sometimes the picture helps him to the words of the line. Similarly ■the first clauso of the Lord's Prayer reached his ears as "Our Father we chart," and always evoked the vision of the only chart he knew, one of the world on Mevrator's projection, which hun» in the schoolroom. Such capricious associations many renders perhaps could parallel, but, in addition, the boy scorns to have had in an unusual degree the imaginative child's power of throwing himself into the principal character of any story lie read. Thus his grandmother was Roderick Dhu, he himself was i'itzJames, and thought FitzJames's thoughts and felt his feelings, and long after his grandmother and .ho had stopped reading they would, continue to talk f and act appropriately to their assumed characters:—. "I thus lived in a complete dreamland peopled by characters in fiction, bloodthirsty Revolutionists, guillotined Girondists,' Chr'stians with packs on ' their backs, and a hundred such like, among which Prince Charlie, and the contributions from 'Singing Sandy,' held their awn. One of the results of this was tliafc as, from time to time, I became enamoured of some particular character, I would walk through the street of (ho village with a tin sword and a drum, and a tra-cosy (I suppose transmuted into a helmet). and' Margaret, or old Mrs. Houston, would ask me who I was to-day."— ''Manchester Guardian."