hich can hardly now be obtained. Mr. Lambkin's poem,
written for the Newdigate Prize in 1893 on the prescribed theme for that
year, "The Benefits of the Electric Light," might fairly be considered a
warning to the examiners to set their subject with care.

The first of his popular essays in amusement, the one by which--owing to
an accident of music--he is still best known, though anonymously, to a
large public, is _The Bad Child's Book of Beasts_. Successors in a
similar manner are _More Beasts for Worse Children_ (delightful title),
_A Moral Alphabet_, and _Cautionary Tales for Children_. These are
successful books for children, of a great popularity, and may be read
with considerable pleasure by elder persons.

To define the particular quality which makes them good is more than a
little difficult. It is much easier to analyse and expose the virtues
of the most affecting poetry than to explain what moves us in the
mildest piece of humour. This is amply proved by the fact that
innumerable volumes exist on the origin of comedy and the cause of
laughter, and there are more to come: while, roughly speaking, even
philosophers are agreed as to the manner in which serious poetry touches
us.

A great deal, too, of the appeal of these pieces is due to the
illustrations of B. T. B. which complement the text with an apt and
grotesque commentary. The pleasure given by the verse, perhaps, if one
may handle so delicate and trifling a thing, lies in a sort of
inconsequence and unexpectedness. Witness the poem on the Yak:

Then tell your Papa where the Yak can be got,
And if he is awfully rich
He will buy you the creature--

(The reader now turns over the page.)

Or else
he will _not_.
(I cannot be positive which.)

Or it may reside in mere genial idiocy, as in _The Dodo_:

The Dodo used to walk around
And take the sun and air.
The Sun yet warms his native ground--
The Dodo is not there!

The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now for ever dumb--
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.

This is the quality which chiefly inspires the _Cautionary Tales_, that
admirable series of biographies. "_Matilda, Who told Lies and was Burned
to Death_" is perhaps too well known to quote, but we may extract a
passage from "_Lord Lundy, who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and
thereby ruined his Political Career_":

It happened to Lord Lundy then,