from behind his brother's shield, and after peering forth to discharge an arrow at a Trojan—

as a child creeps to his mother, crept

To Ajax.

Achilles, in his mourning for Patroclus, introduces the parental feeling.

In the Medea of Euripides, the mother's scene with her children shows the poetic handling of parental fondness, in a few prominent touches, chiefly the responsive looks and smiles, with little or nothing of helplessness and dependence. I will embrace my children, O, my sons,

Give, give your mother your dear hands to kiss!
O, dearest hands, and mouths most dear to me,
And forms and noble faces of my sons!

Be happy even there: what here was yours,
Your father robs you of. O, delicate scent!

O, tender touch and sweet breath of my boys!

The play with children was imitated in the doings of Cupid, who was represented as a lovely boy, not too big to dispense with motherly protection and fondness. This is almost the only standing embodiment of parental feeling in ancient poetry.

In Virgil, Dido makes love to Eneas by petting his boy Ascanius.

The parental feeling in Rome comes out in some remarkable tales, both historical and mythical; but it is the case of the grown-up children, who assume a different aspect with parents. The sacrifice of Virginia by her father was the parental fondness coming into collision with family honour. In describing that remarkable scene, our own poet draws a lofty ideal picture of parental attachment and devotion.

Among the ancients, the frequent practice of exposing female infants must have given a check to the fondness of parents for their new-born offspring.

In the Middle Ages, infancy was raised to a much higher rank in poetic treatment. The infant was assimilated to the Angel, in purity, innocence, personal charm. The class 'cherub was a combination of the angelic and the child-like.

Still more powerful was the direction given by the worship of Jesus Christ, in His capacity of the infant son of the Virgin Mary. The Mother and Child entered into Art as a standing conception, and were provided with all the inte

PARENTAL FEELING IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

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resting adjuncts that the painter could embody on canvas, or the sacred poet introduce into the hymnal of the church. It was thought that worship could be heightened by invoking the tender sentiment of mankind generally towards infancy. There was, no doubt, one serious drawback; it was difficult to couple with infancy the commanding attributes of the Godhead, which necessarily repose on the full maturity of the Divine Incarnation.

To follow out the Parental Feeling in Literature, we must pass from the stage of infantile attractions, to the relation as appearing in after life. It is then divested of the original charm and transformed into a relationship where the children contribute to become the parent's stay. The more famous poetic situations of the parental feeling suppose children in their maturity. The bloom of youthful beauty is a heightening circumstance, but not essential. So also with the display of amiable virtues, or mental power generally.

Shakespeare, like Homer, has fine passing allusions to the state of infancy: as in Lady Macbeth's reference to her motherly experience; and in the fierce distress of Banquo at the murder of his children. His chief plot turning upon the parental emotions is in Lear; and the management is deeply tragic, the intensity of the emotion being shown exclusively on that side.

The bereaved Constance, in King John, combines the hyperboles of grief with touches of tender remembrance :

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

Wordsworth, in the Address to my Infant Daughter Dora,' the child being a month old, is too much carried away with the lunar resemblance, and works up in but a very slight degree the features of infancy.

Mild offspring of infirm humanity,

Meek Infant! among all forlornest things

The most forlorn.

This does not come home direct to the parental instinct. The weakness of the infant is best given under the guise of dependence and protection.

The digression on the Divine Eternity does not assist

the special theme. Yet amends is to some extent made by the striking contrast that immediately succeeds :-' Yet hail to thee, Frail, feeble monthling! by that name, methinks, Thy scanty breathing-time is portioned out not idly'. The Indian mother, to whose outdoor life the moon is still more expressive of the infant's progress, scarcely assists us, except by aiding in a transition to the higher maternal love of the civilized life. The illustration of the child's life journey by the lunar phases, although obviously suggested by the fact that the child was then but one month old, tells only with an intense nature worshipper like Wordsworth. The concluding lines dwell on the smiles already seen on the child's face; they are styled—

Feelers of love, put forth as if to explore

This untried world, and to prepare thy way
Through a strait passage intricate and dim.

The future destiny of the child is frequently included in the poetic handling of infancy; and is congenial to the seriousness of Wordsworth's view of life. The effect seems to be chilled by his prevailing habit of general moralizing. The child is less a personal interest to him than an occasion for sentiments. Compare in this light Greene's 'Sephestia's Song to her Child,' from the Menophon'. The song opens

thus

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.

There the stroke is made direct upon characteristic points of soothing, by means of the endearing wanton,' and the smiling on the mother's knee.

In the poem on

Michael,' Wordsworth handles the feeling at its later stage, and evokes some of the chief circumstances of interest :

PARENTAL FEELING IN WORDSWORTH.-TENNYSON.

Were dearer now? that from the boy there came
Feelings and emanations-things which were
Light to the sun and music to the wind;

And that the Old Man's heart seemed born again?

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It is in the development of the story that the poet brings us back to Luke's infancy, and depicts the parental emotions in their primitive intensity. This is the narrative given to Luke himself:

Day by day passed on,

And still I loved thee with increasing love,

As the boy has nothing special to recommend him— neither beauty, virtues, talents, nor reciprocal attachment, in any special degree, and as he was destined to incur a grievous moral shipwreck, the poet's delineation represents parental fondness with no more than one special heightening circumstance. Luke was the only child of the father's old age. The labours and sacrifices of parents for children usually make a prominent feature in the embodiment of the emotion; and full justice is done to it in Michael's story.

Tennyson seeks to express the earliest form of parental feeling in his Cradle Song in the 'Princess'. It is the song of a mother to her sleeping babe :—

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,

Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon, and blow,

Blow him again to me:

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

This trusts almost entirely to its soft music and its appropriate imagery. There is little of parental feeling directly expressed.

It is otherwise with the next stanza:

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

Father will come to thee soon;

Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

Father will come to thee soon;

Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west

Under the silver moon:

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

Here conjugal and parental feeling are combined throughout, the babe appearing as an object of common affection

and a bond of union. In the expression of parental feeling there is, however, little but the reiterated utterance of one or two thoughts; but this must be recognized as natural to the situation, and a correct representation of motherly fondness.

Tennyson attempts to portray parental feeling in a more advanced stage in 'The Grandmother'. It is the talk of an old woman to her granddaughter, on hearing of the death of her eldest son. She describes all his excellencies as a child and as a man, and gives utterance to her parental satisfaction in contemplating these. Thus :—

And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne?
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
And Willy's wife has written: she never was overwise,
Never the wife for Willy: he wouldn't take my advice.

The spirit of the last two lines, expanded in the next stanza, and appearing again, jars somewhat on the feeling of parental affection, but is to be defended as dramatically correct. The third stanza gives the pure parental spirit :

Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock;
Never a man could fling him: for Willy stood like a rock.
"Here's a leg for a babe of a week!" says doctor; and he would
be bound,

There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.

Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue!
I ought to have gone before him: I wonder he went so young.

The points selected for admiration are appropriate to the speaker; and the parental partiality and satisfaction well depicted.

A long digression follows, in the manner of age; and then she returns to her children, whom, though all dead, she almost feels to be about her still:

But as to the children, Annie, they're all about me yet.

Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at twoPatter she goes, my own little Annie, an Annie like you : Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will, While Harry is in the five-acre, and Charlie ploughing the hill.

And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too-they sing to their team:

Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of a dream.
They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed-
I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.