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"So my dear Madam, you think Nursery Songs mere trash, not worth utterance or remembrance, and beneath the dignity of the "march of mind" of our days! I would bow to your judgment, but you always talk so loud in the midst of a song; look grave at a joke-and the leaves of that copy of Wordsworth's Poems, presented to you on your birthday-I will not say how many years ago, still re... More

"So my dear Madam, you think Nursery Songs mere trash, not worth utterance or remembrance, and beneath the dignity of the "march of mind" of our days! I would bow to your judgment, but you always talk so loud in the midst of a song; look grave at a joke-and the leaves of that copy of Wordsworth's Poems, presented to you on your birthday-I will not say how many years ago, still remain uncut. Facts like these, and others constantly occurring, prove that your ear cannot relish melody; and that poetry does not touch your feelings. Besides, you are still unmarried, and you say, I record it with regret, "you hate children." Doubtless you were never born a child yourself.

It is to mothers, sisters, kind-hearted aunts, and even fathers, who are summoned to become unwilling vocalists at break of day by young gentlemen and ladies of two years old; and to all having the charge of [Pg iv]children, who are alive to the importance of cultivating their natural keenness for rhyme, rhythm, melody, and instinctive love for fun, that I offer this first part of a collection of Traditional Nursery Songs. This Collection has been in progress for more than ten years, and it is now published, after a revision, with all the editions by Ritson, and others, that I have been able to meet with.

The Pictures, though made especially for the benefit of my young audience, will not, I feel pretty sure, be uninteresting to more advanced connoisseurs. I am not at liberty to mention the names of the artists who in their kind sympathies for children have obliged me with them. It is a mystery to be unravelled by the little people themselves, who, as they advance in a knowledge and love of beauty, will not fail to recognize in the works of some of the best of our painters of familiar [Pg 5]life, the pencils of those who gave them early lessons in genuine art."