CHAPTER X.
Mrs. Leicester's School.—A Removal.—Poetry for Children.
1807-9.Æt. 43-45.
The Tales from Shakespeare were no sooner finished than Mary began, as her letters show, to cast about for some new scheme which should realise an equally felicitous and profitable result. This time she drew upon her own invention: and in about a year a little volume of tales for children was written, called Mrs. Leicester's School, to which Charles also contributed. The stories, ten in number, seven by Mary and three by her brother, are strung on a connecting thread by means of an introductory Dedication to the Young Ladies at Amwell School, who are supposed to beguile the dreariness of the first evening at a new school by each telling the story of her own life, at the suggestion of a friendly governess who constitutes herself their "historiographer."
There is little or no invention in these tales; but a "tenderness of feeling and a delicacy of taste"—the praise is Coleridge's—which lift them quite above the ordinary level of children's stories. And in no way are these qualities shown more than in the treatment of the lights and shades—the failings and the virtues—of the little folk, which appear in due and natural proportion; but the faults are treated in a kindly,
