But the great writers were those that lived most fully in their stories. It was no more essential that they should write nothing else but children’s books than that a mother should never go outside her nursery; for as every man (unless he be a pedant or a monster) has something of the child in him, so every child likes to enter into the talk and business of men. There never was a good child’s book that a grown-up person could not enjoy; and the habit of “talking-down” to children, whether in books or in life, is more fatal to understanding and friendship than the abstract reasoning of the Lilliputians. When Johnson praised Dr. Watts for his condescension in writing children’s verses, he did him an injustice, for no man could have taken a little task more seriously. As to Mrs. Barbauld,[123] had she deserved half the abuse of her critics, she never would have found favour in so many nurseries.