284 NURSERY POETRY. 



ened description of the hill which Jack and Gill ascended. He 

 would have been quite verbose in telling us its physical condition, 

 inflicting- on us, ;in all probability, a geological treatise, either 

 in metre or blank verse, as the case might be. Here there 1 is 

 nothing of the kind : not a word is said either of the size or the 

 physical aspect of the hill. It may have been a hill whose summit, 

 to use the amorous phraseology of other poets, " kissed the clouds ;" 

 or it may have been one of much more lowly proportions. Then 

 the poet is equally silent as to the appearance of the hill. Was it a 

 hill with a surface of sand ? Or with a rocky surface? Was its sur- 

 face clad with the " green, green grass?" Or did it exhibit a cover- 

 ing of heath ? These are questions which the poet very properly 

 forbears to touch on, far less to answer. He leaves the reader to 

 form his own ideas of the hill, and in so doing, pays his understand- 

 ing the highest compliment. I hate minuteness in any thing ; it 

 invariably destroys the effect. Here it would have been fatal to 

 the poem. 



The author with equally good judgment forbears to tell us how 

 Jack and Gill ascended the hill. He very wisely contents himself 

 with informing us that they "went up the hill.'' Any other poet would 

 have dosed us with some forty or fifty pages of description touching 

 the ascent of the two youths. In this, as in the case just mentioned, 

 the poet leaves every thing to the imagination of his readers. 

 Whether Jack and Gill took only a few minutes or as many hours to 

 reach the top, is a matter on which we are left to form our own 

 judgment. Nor is the slightest hint given us as to the mode of the 

 ascent. It may have been in the usual way, that is to say, the heroic 

 youths may have walked up the hill, or they may have crawled to 

 the top on all fours. The great charm of the line consists in the un- 

 broken silence which the poet maintains on these points. 



In the second line, the poet unfolds to us the object for which the 

 youths ascended the hill, It was 



" To fetch a pail of water." 



The author abstains from telling us whether the boys had gone up 

 the hill of their own accord on this errand, or whether they had 

 been sent by their parents. We are left to our own conclusions on 

 the subject. In either case, we feel most deeply interested in the 

 boys, and admire their conduct. If they went of their own free will, 

 it shows how anxious they were to anticipate the wants and wishes 

 of their parents by bringing them a pail of water before it was 

 required. If, on the other hand, they went up the hill in obedience 

 to the expressed wishes of their parents, the circumstance shows the 

 warmth of their filial regard, and a sense of duty to their parents, 

 which in these days of juvenile degeneracy cannot be too warmly 

 commended. Though I fondly hope that so melancholy a result 

 will not ensue from obedience to parents in other cases, as in the 

 case of poor Jack and Gill, I would anxiously press on my youthful 

 readers, the propriety of imitating the example thus sot them by 



