Whereas there is scarcely a single modern poet who has not lingered with undisguised feelings of happiness over the gentle memories of his childhood, not one of the ancient poets has systematically touched upon the theme at all.

From Lydgate down to Tennyson, it would be easy to quote from our English poets a continuous line of lyric songs on the subject of boyish years.

How to the young child the fir-trees seemed to touch the sky, how his heart leaped up at the sight of the rainbow, how he sat at his mother's feet and pricked into paper the tissued flowers of her dress, how he chased the bright butterfly, or in his tenderness feared to brush even the dust from off its wings, how he learnt sweet lessons and said innocent prayers at his father's knee; trifles like these, yet trifles which may have been rendered noble and beautiful by a loving imagination, have been narrated over and over again in the songs of our poets.

The lovely lines of Henry Vaughan might be taken as a type of thousands more:-- "Happy those early days, when I Shined in my Angel infancy.
Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought; * * * * * "Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense; But felt through all this fleshy dress, Bright shoots of everlastingness." The memory of every student of English poetry will furnish countless parallels to thoughts like these.

How is it that no similar poem could be quoted from the whole range of ancient literature?
How is it that to the Greek and Roman poets that morning of life, which should have been so filled with "natural blessedness," seems to have been a blank?
How is it that writers so voluminous, so domestic, so affectionate as Cicero, Virgil, and Horace do not make so much as a single allusion to the existence of their own mothers?
To answer this question fully would be to write an entire essay on the difference between ancient and modern life, and would carry me far away from my immediate subject.[1] But I may say generally, that the explanation rests in the fact that in all probability childhood among the ancients was a disregarded, and in most cases a far less happy, period than it is with us.