Childhood in literature and art, with some observations on literature for children — Text and Context

The Vicar of Wakefield and the Elemental Child

Scudder uses Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield to illustrate how the child appears in literature as a catalyst for elemental emotion. He quotes the fire scene at length: the Vicar rushes through flames to rescue his two little ones, and the mother's calm declaration that she will die with them gives way to transports of joy. The passage is remarkable for its raw sentiment—the father holding up his children and crying, "I have saved my treasure." Scudder reads this as part of a broader instinct in late eighteenth-century literature to return to the elemental in life and nature. The child here is not a miniature adult but a source of primal attachment and dramatic pathos.

Cowper's Tenderness and the Pastoral Child

Scudder contrasts Goldsmith's dramatic instinct with Cowper's gentler, more secluded sensibility. Cowper's life in pastoral country, occupied with trivial pleasures, offered him primitive material: he sang of hares, goldfish, and children. Scudder highlights the familiar lines describing "The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot" from Tirocinium, noting how the description melts into a tender melancholy. A deeper note is struck in the Lines on the Receipt of my Mother's Picture. For Scudder, Cowper represents a quieter but equally significant turn toward the child as a subject worthy of poetic attention—one that combines domestic intimacy with a sense of loss.

Reynolds and the Democracy of Childhood in Art

Scudder argues that the new birth of childhood in literature had its parallel in art, particularly in the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough. Reynolds, though working under academic rules, painted a remarkable number of children's pieces. Scudder lists them with evident pleasure: the tenderness of Children in the Wood, the peace of the Sleeping Child, the timidity of the Strawberry Girl, the wildness of the Gypsy Boy. He insists that in the true democracy of art we know no distinction between Master Crewe as Henry VIII and a boy with cabbage nets. Reynolds studied medieval painters but came back to paint English children. For Scudder, this body of work brings us close to the heart of his subject.

Scudder's method is comparative and historical, moving from Greek and Roman literature through Hebrew life, early Christianity, medieval art, and into the national literatures of England, France, Germany, and America. Readers should expect a work of synthesis rather than close reading: Scudder assembles evidence from poetry, fiction, painting, and sculpture to argue that the child became a central figure in Western culture only at a specific historical moment. The excerpts suggest a book more concerned with cultural history than with pedagogy or child psychology.

Reading Scudder’s book, I kept thinking how angels in old paintings are often just children with heavier wings—same solemn gaze, same fragile gravity. It’s a comfort, that continuity. There’s a quiet pleasure in turning to The Mentor: Angels in Art, Vol. 1, Num. 40 — Inside the Classic and finding those faces waiting, still patient, still young.