People struck with these spectacles cry aloud about the power of imagination in the young.Indeed there may be two words to that.It is, in some ways, but a pedestrian fancy that the child exhibits.It is the grown people who make the nursery stories; all the children do, is jealously to preserve the text.One out of a dozen reasons why ROBINSON CRUSOEshould be so popular with youth, is that it hits their level in this matter to a nicety; Crusoe was always at makeshifts and had, in so many words, to PLAY at a great variety of professions; and then the book is all about tools, and there is nothing that delights a child so much.Hammers and saws belong to a province of life that positively calls for imitation.The juvenile lyrical drama, surely of the most ancient Thespian model, wherein the trades of mankind are successively simulated to the running burthen "On a cold and frosty morning," gives a good instance of the artistic taste in children.And this need for overt action and lay figures testifies to a defect in the child's imagination which prevents him from carrying out his novels in the privacy of his own heart.He does not yet know enough of the world and men.His experience is incomplete.That stage-wardrobe and scene-room that we call the memory is so ill provided, that he can overtake few combinations and body out few stories, to his own content, without some external aid.He is at the experimental stage; he is not sure how one would feel in certain circumstances; to make sure, he must come as near trying it as his means permit.And so here is young heroism with a wooden sword, and mothers practice their kind vocation over a bit of jointed stick.It may be laughable enough just now; but it is these same people and these same thoughts, that not long hence, when they are on the theatre of life, will make you weep and tremble.For children think very much the same thoughts and dream the same dreams, as bearded men and marriageable women.No one is more romantic.Fame and honour, the love of young men and the love of mothers, the business man's pleasure in method, all these and others they anticipate and rehearse in their play hours.Upon us, who are further advanced and fairly dealing with the threads of destiny, they only glance from time to time to glean a hint for their own mimetic reproduction.Two children playing at soldiers are far more interesting to each other than one of the scarlet beings whom both are busy imitating.This is perhaps the greatest oddity of all."Art for art" is their motto; and the doings of grown folk are only interesting as the raw material for play.Not Theophile Gautier, not Flaubert, can look more callously upon life, or rate the reproduction more highly over the reality; and they will parody an execution, a deathbed, or the funeral of the young man of Nain, with all the cheerfulness in the world.
The true parallel for play is not to be found, of course, in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely upon philosophical interests beyond the scope of childhood.It is when we make castles in the air and personate the leading character in our own romances, that we return to the spirit of our first years.Only, there are several reasons why the spirit is no longer so agreeable to indulge.Nowadays, when we admit this personal element into our divagations we are apt to stir up uncomfortable and sorrowful memories, and remind ourselves sharply of old wounds.Our day-dreams can no longer lie all in the air like a story in the ARABIAN NIGHTS; they read to us rather like the history of a period in which we ourselves had taken part, where we come across many unfortunate passages and find our own conduct smartly reprimanded.And then the child, mind you, acts his parts.
He does not merely repeat them to himself; he leaps, he runs, and sets the blood agog over all his body.And so his play breathes him; and he no sooner assumes a passion than he gives it vent.Alas! when we betake ourselves to our intellectual form of play, sitting quietly by the fire or lying prone in bed, we rouse many hot feelings for which we can find no outlet.Substitutes are not acceptable to the mature mind, which desires the thing itself; and even to rehearse a triumphant dialogue with one's enemy, although it is perhaps the most satisfactory piece of play still left within our reach, is not entirely satisfying, and is even apt to lead to a visit and an interview which may be the reverse of triumphant after all.
In the child's world of dim sensation, play is all in all."Making believe" is the gist of his whole life, and he cannot so much as take a walk except in character.I could not learn my alphabet without some suitable MISE-EN-SCENE, and had to act a business man in an office before I could sit down to my book.Will you kindly question your memory, and find out how much you did, work or pleasure, in good faith and soberness, and for how much you had to cheat yourself with some invention? I remember, as though it were yesterday, the expansion of spirit, the dignity and self-reliance, that came with a pair of mustachios in burnt cork, even when there was none to see.Children are even content to forego what we call the realities, and prefer the shadow to the substance.When they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because they are making believe to speak French.I have said already how even the imperious appetite of hunger suffers itself to be gulled and led by the nose with the fag end of an old song.
And it goes deeper than this: when children are together even a meal is felt as an interruption in the business of life; and they must find some imaginative sanction, and tell themselves some sort of story, to account for, to colour, to render entertaining, the simple processes of eating and drinking.