It must always be borne in mind that Blake’s contribution to the literature of childhood is through highly idealized forms. It is spiritual or angelic childhood which floats before his eyes, so that the little creatures who dance on the green, the little chimney sweep, the children filing into St. Paul’s, are translated by his visionary power into the images of an essential childhood; they cease to be individual illustrations. * * * * * We are told that in the fearful days of the French Revolution there was an eruption from the secret places of Paris of a vast horde of poor, ignorant, and vicious people, who had been kept out of sight by lords and ladies. One may accept the fact as symbolical of that emergence into the light of Christianity of poverty and degradation. The poor had always been with the world, but it is not too much to say that now for the first time did they begin to be recognized as part and parcel of humanity. Wordsworth’s poems set the seal upon this recognition. Dickens’s novels naturalized the poor in literature, and, as in the case of Wordsworth, poverty and childhood went hand in hand. Dickens, however, though he made a distinct addition to the literature of childhood, rather registered a presence already acknowledged than acted as a prophet of childhood. The great beneficent and humanitarian movement of the century was well under way, and had already found abundant expression in ragged schools and Sunday-schools and in education generally, when Dickens, with his quick reporter’s sight, seized upon salient features in this new exhibition of humanity. He was quite aside from the ordinary organized charities, but he was moved by much the same spirit as that which was briskly at work among the poor and the young. He was caught by the current, and his own personal experience was swift to give special direction to his imagination.