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Fireside Nursery Stories
from Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales
- NURSEY STORIES
The efforts of modern romance are so greatly superior to the best
fictions of a former age, that old wives' tales are not so readily
tolerated as they were in times past. We question whether any one in
these days, save a very grave antiquary, could read two chapters of the
Morte Arthure without a yawn. Let us, then, turn to that simpler class
of narratives which bears the same relation to novels that rural ballads
do to the poem; and ascertain whether the wild interest which, in the
primitive tales erewhile taught by nurse, first awakened our
imagination, can be so reflected as to render their resuscitation
agreeable. We rely a good deal for the success of the experiment on the
power of association; for though these inventions may, in their
character, be suited to the dawn of intellect, they not infrequently
bear the impress of creative fancy, and their imperceptible influence
over the mind does not always evaporate at a later age.
Few persons, indeed, there are, even amongst those who affect to be
insignificantly touched by the imagination, who can be recalled to the
stories and carols that charmed them in their childhood wholly without
emotion. An affectation of indifference in such matters is, of course,
not unusual, for most thoughts springing from early associations, and
those on which so many minds love to dwell, may not be indiscriminately
divulged. It is impossible they should be generally appreciated or
understood. Most of us, however, are liable to be occasionally touched
by allusions breathing of happy days, bearing our memories downward to
behold the shadows of joys that have long passed away like a dream. They
now serve only "to mellow our occasions," like that "old and antique
song" which relieved the passion of the Duke Orsino.
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