its humor is swallowed up in tragedy, and the terror of what is to come helps little readers over such sad stumbling-blocks as
"So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon!"
lines which are every whit as painful to their ears as to ours. I have often wondered how the infant Southeys and Coleridges, that bright-eyed group of alert and charming children, all afire with romantic impulses, received "The Cataract of Lodore," when papa Southey condescended to read it in the schoolroom. What well-bred efforts to appear pleased and grateful! What secret repulsion to a senseless clatter of words, as remote from the silvery sweetness, the cadenced music of falling waters, as from the unalterable requirements of poetic art!
"And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme."
Ah! unwise little son, to whose rash request generations of children have owed the presence, in readers and elocution-books and volumes of "Select Lyrics for the Nursery," of those hated and hateful verses.
"Poetry came to me with Sir Walter Scott,"
