instance, arise as early as this tender age; and that on these foundations it is neither difficult nor impossible for the whole superstructure of rhetoric to be laid, provided always that we act reasonably with reasonable creatures.
7. Almost the same may be said of poetry, which binds, and, as it were, entwines language in rhythm and measure. The principles of poetry arise with the beginning of speech; for as soon as the child begins to understand words, at the same time it begins to love melody and rhythm.[1] Therefore nurses, when a child, from having fallen or injured itself, is wailing, are wont to solace it with these or similar rhymes:[2]—
“My dear baby, O sweet baby,
Why did you go and run away?
This has come from going astray;
If baby had been sitting still,
It never would have suffered ill.”
This pleases infants so much that they not only become immediately quiet, but even smile. The nurses also, pat-
- ↑ Mr. Albert E. Winship, in his little booklet The Shop (Boston, 1889), remarks: ‘‘The keynote of home is rhythm, which means comfort. . . . It can neither be tested by rule nor taught by methods.”
Plato, in the Republic, observes: “Good language and good harmony and grace and good rhythm all depend upon a good nature, by which I do not mean that silliness which by courtesy we call good nature, but a mind that is really well and nobly constituted in its moral character.”
- ↑ Jean Paul remarks: “The error of prematurely introducing a child to the treasures of poetry can only arise from the esthetic mistake of believing the spirit of poetry to consist less in the whole, than in its variously scattered, dazzling charms of sound, pictures, events, and feelings; for these, a child has naturally a ready ear. Rhyme delights both the most uncultivated and the youngest ear.”
