5. The Frog Who Would A Wooing Go.
Charles Henry Bennett, illustrator.
London: G. Routledge & Co., [1858].
This traditional ballad about the tragic-comic courtship of a frog and mouse was a great favorite in the Victorian nursery. As the Potter family was also very fond of it, there is some possibility that little Beatrix might have seen this picture book by Bennett (1829-1867). She does not mention him, however, in either her journal or published letters.
Until recently a somewhat neglected illustrator, Bennett was a gifted
satirist.
His pictures accompanying the ballad's gruesome climax, in which the
cat and her kittens catch Miss Mouse and her uncle Rat, are more violent
than most, but not without touches of macabre humor.
