Richard Johnson’s The Looking-Glass for the Mind (1787) — a free-spirited adaptation of Arnaud Berquin’s L’Ami des Enfans — is a reminder of how some moral admonitions stand the test of time
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The world of publishing can move in a fast and unpredictable manner. Genres fall out of fashion, certain writers go by the wayside, one medium usurps another. But there are virtual guarantees as well. One of these is the demand for children’s literature.
Indeed, if one had to place a bet on anything in the world of publishing, one probably couldn’t go wrong in predicting that children’s stories will always be desired and requested. Not just next year or next century, but for as long as there are curious little human beings and someone to read to them. Children’s stories are far too valuable — far too powerful — to ever go away. As vessels of wisdom, learning, and joy, they have no substitute. They instruct and entertain, show us our strengths and weaknesses, and illuminate aspects of life that are often all too easy to miss.
Children’s stories, of course, can be defined in different ways, just as they can encompass a vast range of reading ability. Nonetheless, we don’t often mistake children’s literature for that which is written for adults. Indeed, it isn’t hard to spot a children’s story, even if it was written long ago, in a different country, and in a writing style that contrasts markedly with a modern one.
That’s certainly the case with Richard Johnson’s congenial The Looking-Glass for the Mind, first published in 1787. The stories within come from Arnaud Berquin’s L’Ami des Enfants, published just a few years before that. The two works, however, differ in more than just their languages. As Johnson writes in the preface, “The following pages may be considered rather as a Collection of the Beauties of M. Berquin, than as a literally abridged translation of that work, several original thoughts and observations being occasionally introduced into different parts of them.”
Though nice to know, the statement isn’t exactly bursting with clarity — and unless one has read Berquin’s stories, it’s impossible to say to what degree and in what places Johnson has done what he says he’s done.
Whether or not this tweaking and inventing of Johnson’s contributes to the jarring range of quality found in The Looking-Glass, is also unclear. In any case, it’s striking just how much the twenty four stories vary: some are logically structured with a relevant maxim topping things off, while others are a tangled heap of narrative threads that culminate in a confused and lukewarm coda.
But something else also stands out. The lessons imparted in the stories — with very few exceptions — are entirely relatable to ones many of us would teach our kids today. Perhaps that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that sound moral instruction tends to transcend time and place. Though Johnson’s and Berquin’s stories are over two centuries old, Aesop’s fables are over ten times that age — and we can all learn from those.
Certain themes pop up again and again in the The Looking-Glass: treating others the way you’d like to be treated; the value and beauty of helping others; the importance of treating one’s parents with respect. As for the latter, the opening story involves a grieving child who comes to lose not just his mother but also his father. The author implores his “little readers” to cherish and respect their parents while they’re still alive. (Good advice for children and adults.)
One of the best stories in the collection deals with another common theme: children’s lack of foresight. In one story, a child’s infatuation for the delights of the current season leads him to wish it would never change. His father has him write down this wish. When the year has come full circle, the father has the child read them all, showing “how contradictory his wishes had been.” The unique traits of each season, the child learns, have a proper time and unique role — and it is a good thing, rather than bad, that we can’t “regulate the course of nature.”
Another powerful story centers around the tendency for riches to corrupt one’s character. When the young protagonist learns about this unsettling fact through a vivid story told by his father, he asserts that he’d rather maintain his current position than ever sink into a mindset of “contempt” for others. Wise kiddo.
The strong stories in the collection, like those mentioned above, are unfortunately found between some almost comically bad ones. Their low quality isn’t due to an errant or silly piece of advice, but rather a wildly constructed narrative that goes in too many directions, loses a clear center, and consequently leaves the reader stupefied rather than enlightened. But perhaps the brightest of young 18th-century readers would have come away with the realization that literature — as with life — contains high and low points, satisfactions and disappointments.
From stone throwing and accidental gunshots, to cranky dogs, bickering siblings, and supremely tender acts of altruism, The Looking-Glass for the Mind contains a bit of everything.
You can check them out for yourself and see what resonates the strongest: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26885/26885-h/26885-h.htm
Spectatio 