PREFACE

The woodcuts which illustrate the following nursery rhymes have been facsimiled with exemplary care and admirable skill by Mr. W. H. Hooper, from those which were given coloured by hand in the edition of 1823. But I think that clever children will like having the mere outlines to colour in their own way; and for older students there may be some interest in observing how much life and reality may be obtained by the simplest methods of engraving, when the design is founded on action instead of effect. The vigorous black type of the text has also been closely matched.

I have spoken in Fors (vol. v. pp. 37—38) of the meritorious rhythmic cadence of the verses, not, in its way, easily imitable. In the old book, no account is given of what the cats learned when they went to school, and I thought my younger readers might be glad of some notice of such particulars. I have added, therefore, the rhymes on the third, fourth, eighth, and ninth pages—the kindness of Miss Greenaway supplying the needful illustrations. But my rhymes do not ring like the real ones; and I would not allow Miss Greenaway to subdue the grace of her first sketches to the formality of the earlier work: but we alike trust that the interpolation may not be thought to detract from the interest of the little book, which, for the rest, I have the greatest pleasure in commending to the indulgence of the Christmas fireside, because it relates nothing that is sad, and pourtrays nothing that is ugly.