No More Learning

Another early species (of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries)
was neither a schoolbook nor a book of mere recreation : the
succession of books of courtesy,' which became current soon
after the invention of printing. For historical purposes, they
have been admirably grouped (and as admirably edited) in two
publications of the Early English Text Society, The Babees' Boke",
and Queene Elizabethe's Achademy. They provide the antithesis to
monkish or literary education. The pamphlets in them were
written to fit the young gentleman for this world, not for the next;
and for the active life of this world rather than for the contem-
plative. They describe manners, not culture: their ideal is
anticipated in Chaucer's squire. They were not for the poor of
Langland :
Now may each cobbler send his son to school,
And every beggar's brat learn from his book,
Turn to a writer and get into a lord's house.
To that end, you must enter a monastic or cathedral school: there,
you could get learning. Here, in these treatises, you got, instead,
virtue and knowledge of the world. Incidentally, it may be noted,
readers were warned against adult works : 'Keep them from
reading of feigned fables, vain fantasies, and wanton stories,
and songs of love, which bring much mischief to youth? The
alternative was 'good Godly books. But there was not any
special provision of such works.
These educational and semi-educational books have been men-
tioned because, in early periods, they possessed the importance
i See vol. II, p. 341.
? Rhodes's Boke of Nurture (1577); printed before 1554.


## p. 369 (#391) ############################################

xvi]
Hell-fire Tales
369
conferred by isolation. The effect of that isolation is seen when,
in more authentic beginnings of children's literature, good Godly
books' first emerge. The new feature is a natural by-product of
the national life. The end of religious persecution in its more
virulent forms, the Elizabethan diffusion of knowledge and en-
thusiasm, the Jacobean growth of style, the puritan fierce flame
of morality, the vast increase in the activity of the press—all
helped to make the child-mind, not, perhaps, a centre of in-
tensive cultivation, but, at least, not a fallow field. But, since all
previous efforts (except the decayed and, so to speak, illegally
acquired romances, which will be dealt with when chapbooks are
considered) had been, more or less, more rather than less, didactic,
the new product was, also, didactic. Its novelty lay in the fact
that it was not a text-book. It was purely moral, not forensic
nor technical.
It was a grim affair, with few literary merits.
Hell-fire was its chief theme; anything might turn out to be a
faggot for the conflagration of wicked little souls. More than a
century later, Mrs Sherwood was influenced by the same obsession.
The kingdom of heaven might be of children; but children were
;
always dreadfully in jeopardy of another fate.
The best vision of these grisly performances is to be seen in
one of them. Thomas White, minister of the gospel, in A Little
Book for Little Children (1702)a volume of brief moral
addresses-recommends his audience to read
no Ballads or foolish Books, but the Bible, and the Plain-mans path way
to Heaven, a very plain holy book for you; get the Practice of Piety;
Mr Baxter's Call to the Unconverted; Allen's Allarum to the Unconverted;
read the Histories of the Martyrs that dyed for Christ; and in the Book of
Martyrs. . . . Read also often Treatises of Death, and Hell, and Judgement,
and of the Love and Passion of Christ.
Some perfectly horrible stories of martyrdom ensue. Foxe's
Book of Martyrs, as it is colloquially called, was and long con-
tinued to be, perhaps still is in some strata of society, a great
incentive to piety and gateway to religious adventure; and it
must be admitted that many children like such horrors, and do
not suffer any harm from them. Still, White's love of tortured
saints (young ones, for choice) and his readiness to describe their
torments in detail pass the limits of innocuous ferocity.
The religious works catalogued by White as suited to the
young were adult or semi-adult in purpose. More definitely
juvenile was the anonymous Young Man': Calling . . . a Serious
and Compassionate Address to all Young Persons to remember
24
6. L XI.
CH. XVI.


## p. 370 (#392) ############################################

370
[CH.
Children's Books
6
their Creator in the days of their Youth (1685). The author of a
great part of it was, probably, Samuel Crossman, whose initials
are at the end of the preface. “Richard Burton' (ie. Nathaniel
Crouch) wrote the residue. An eighth edition appeared in 1725,
so the book was clearly in demand. Crossman outdoes White in
his examples of martyrdom ; his homilies, also, are longer, but not
at all more valuable or enduring. Like White, he was vigorously
protestant. Some Divine Poems—passably good hymns-were
included in the final pages. Among the advertisements at the
end is one of Winter Evening Entertainments? This, perhaps-
one work alone excepted—is the nearest approach, before the
eighteenth century, to a child's book in the modern sense.
Here's Milk for Children, Wisdom for Young Men,
To teach them that they turn not Babes again,
says a prefatory poem. The 'wisdom' was, presumably, the ten
coarse stories of the jest-book type (“ten pleasant and delightful
relations ') which form the first part; the 'milk,' no doubt, the fifty
riddles of the second part, each of which is adorned with an
explanation, an observation and a moral, to say nothing of dupli-
cated woodcuts. A somewhat similar work was The Father's
Blessing Penn'd for the Instruction of his Children (by W. J. ,
M. A. ), the date of which may be roughly conjectured from one of
the 'riddles in rhyme' which (in addition to thirteen 'lessons')
it contains :
Q. What rare Outlandish Fruit was that of late
Which Heaven sent us to restore our State ?
A. Our Statesmen had the Scurvy deeply, sure
The Princely Orange was a sovereign cure.
It is accompanied by a woodcut of an orange. This cut and
its fellows did duty elsewhere, in another Little Book for Little
Children, also by Thomas White (not dated; the frontispiece,
however, is a portrait of queen Anne). Here, too, is a mixture of
a
education and amusement—a cut of a hornbook, some spelling
lessons, alphabetical rimes and riddles. The volume is notable
for the first appearance in print of A was an Archer, and the
lines displaying the errors of misplaced punctuation, beginning
'I saw a Peacock with a fiery Tail. ' Practically contemporary
1 No copy earlier than 1737 (“Sixth Edition') is available to the writer. But the
description in the advertisement of 1685 exactly coincides with the contents of the
1737 edition, in which the author is given as Richard Burton--Nathaniel Crouch.
Crouch died, probably, before 1725. Winter Evenings, and variants upon it, is &
perpetually recurrent title among children's books,


## p. 371 (#393) ############################################

xvi] • Exemplary’ Compilations 371
with this was The Child's Week's-Work, by William Ronksley
(1712). It is the best of all these early attempts to purvey
'pleasure with profit duly mixt,' though there is more profit than
pleasure in it. Its simplicity of method and absence of dogmatic
frenzy are remarkable. In four successive series of lessons, each
calculated to occupy a week, it runs up to words of four syllables.
A monosyllabic verse may be quoted :
Hear you a Lark?
Tell me what Clerk
Can match her. He that beats
The next Thorn-bush
May raise a Thrush
Would put down all our lays.
Finally, perhaps the most popular-or, at any rate, most widely
read-of all these oppressive compilations was James Janeway's
Token for Children: being an Exact Account of the Conversion,
Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young
Children (? 1720): a supreme example of morbid and gloating
piety. The title conveys its scope. It was not alone; three or
four works like it can be discovered; but it was the most highly
coloured.
A more polished type—indeed, pietists might have said a politely
immoral type—is the Chesterfield of the seventeenth century, A
Lady's Gift (1688, published without authorisation, often re-
printed). Halifax—the trimmer-could write admirable English,
and, if his Advice to a Daughter (the sub-title) is worldly, it
is, also, honest and sensible. It had other counterparts in the
next century besides Chesterfield's Letters. Advice to a Young
Nobleman, Letters from a Tutor to his Pupils and similar works
carried out the gentlemanly ideal of making the best of this world
without either despising or making too much of the next.
Works of these types were, if not common, at any rate not
unique. They are not, perhaps, in the direct succession of pure
children's literature: they are but the unennobled ancestors.
But they deserve not to be forgotten by the historian. The more
authentic pedigree follows a line of less unmixed descent-lines,
rather, for the family has, at first, three branches. The older
branches are among the oldest forms of literature preserved to us :
the cadet branch is fathered by two eminent men.
To take the youngest first. The parent work in it has, naturally,
been overshadowed by greater works in the chapter on its author
in a previous volume! All through the eighteenth century, a
1 Vol. VII, chap. VII.
24-2


## p. 372 (#394) ############################################

372
Children's Books
[ch.
work called Divine Emblems; or Temporal Things Spiritualized,
by John Bunyan, was recurrent in little rough editions. It was
not until 1889 that this was identified as a curtailed version of a
longer book-A Book for Boys & Girls: or, Country Rhimes
for Children. By J. B. The first edition contained seventy-four
'meditations'; in 1701, an editor revised it ruthlessly, and cut the
number of emblems down to forty-nine. It consists of short poems
-exceedingly bad poetry, but plain rugged morality-on such
subjects as the frog, the hen, and other common objects, each with
a rimed moral. Bunyan declares his object :
I do't to show them how each fingle-fangle,
On which they doting are, their souls entangle,
As with a web, a trap, a gin, or snare,
And will destroy them, have they not a care.
His 'morals' are as recondite and laborious as those of Gesta
Romanorum. The importance of the book lies in its authorship,
its intention and its method. It reveals not a little of the inspired
tinker's mind. It shows a real desire to provide something special
for children, not merely the old clothes of adult literature cut
down. And it is a deliberate use of a responsible artistic form
and of material not traditional but original.
By Bunyan stands a lesser man but a more skilled artificer-
Isaac Watts. His Divine Songs have already been treated'.
They are quoted every day, and usually misquoted. Some of
them—three or four, at most, it may be; but that is an honourable
percentage-will resound through nurseries for generations yet
to come : the rest are dead, slain by time. For their epoch,
they were not far from perfection, as publishers saw. They were
reprinted endlessly for far more than a century. Mrs Trimmer, in
1789, gave them renewed vogue by a Comment setting forth their
virtues and elaborating their doctrinal teaching. Another writer
adapted their theology to unitarian beliefs. They were at once
carried off into the literary Alsatia of the chapbook. A kind of
imitation appeared in 1751, Puerilia, by John Marchant, 'Songs
for Little Misses, Songs for Little Masters, Songs on Divine, Moral
and other Subjects. ' They had a certain spirit, but did not strike
the imagination of the day: only two editions were issued.
It was the chapbook, that last poor refuge of Middle Age
enchantments, which provided children with what they wanted in
the reign of queen Anne and the first three Georges. They had
to learn the alphabet, they had to read the guides to goodness, the
i Vol. 1x, p. 178.


## p. 373 (#395) ############################################

XVI]
The Chapbook
373
Ollendorfs of petty culture, the anecdotal or poetic allurements
to superior virtue, which, as a matter of fact, young persons are
often quite ready enough to acquire without force. But they were
not less ready to enjoy other fare. A famous passage in The
Tatler (No. 95), in which Mr Bickerstaff describes his little godson
as absorbed in the stories of Bevis and Don Belianis and other
great and famous heroes, sums up the charm of forbidden romance
with the nicest perfection. The chapbook was what the poor
and the young could read familiarly. In these little penny, two-
penny and sixpenny productions-octavo in form, with sixteen
pages, at first, but, after 1726, usually duodecimo, with twenty-four
pages—the last fragments of the old romances were enshrined.
They existed before 1700—certainly early in the eighteenth
century, at least ; but few early copies have survived, and it was
not until the Georgian era that they were profusely manufactured.
Who wrote these versions is not known. They may have been
abbreviations of the manuscript texts of the thirteenth or four-
teenth centuries ; but the discrepancies are so marked that, more
probably, they were oral versions committed to print indepen-
dently in some obscure way. They were issued all over the king-
dom, the centres with the greatest output being, apparently,
London (Aldermary churchyard in particular), Dublin, York,
Glasgow, Newcastle, Stirling and Banbury. The books were not,
in the first instance, meant for children, though, in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, whole series expressly juvenile
appeared (the Banbury set was the best known and, perhaps, best
produced); but children possessed themselves of them. Wood-
blocks were used almost haphazard : Guy slaying a boar in one
booklet was George slaying a dragon in another. The indigenous
heroes of Britain-Tom Thumb, certain Jacks, Hickathrift, Friar
Bacon—were here preserved in a vernacular epic cycle, with such
additions as fashion, fact, or sheer literary piracy from time to
time provided. In some volumes, indecency was the sole point;
others were merely coarse in a natural way; in all, the English
was vile. After 1800, they fell into a decline: better production
ousted them from favour; 'the blocks and types were getting
worn out. . . . Catnach buried them in a dishonoured grave? '
The chief addition to the common stock of chapbook material
made in the eighteenth century were the adventures of Robinson
Crusoe and Gulliver, Watts's poems, the adventures of Philip Quarll
(a pseudo-Crusoe), anecdotes decked out with names invented
1 Ashton, J. , Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century (1882).
6


## p. 374 (#396) ############################################

374
[CH.
Children's Books
by John Newbery for his own much better productions, collections
of nursery rimes (after about 1760) and various versions of
Perrault's fairy tales ; towards the end of the century, eastern and
Arabian tales were added.
It was the chapbook, also, which preserved to us our scant
native fairy lore. Andrew Lang once said that England had but
one authentic fairy-hero-Jack the slayer of Blunderbore and
other giants. But, wherever the stories originated in the long
history of man's mind, many were current, and England once was
'al fulfild of fayerye. ' Popular taste ascribed the decay of Titania's
kingdom to monks : where monks were, ‘farewell, rewards and
fairies. But the stories remained; and a curious allusion in
bishop Corbett's rough but charming seventeenth century poem
shows that they were respected and treasured:
To William Churne of Staffordshire,
Give land and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true:
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle:
For all the fairies' evidence
Were lost if were addle.
William Churne, whoever he was, perished, and his tales with
him ; and the sad friends of fairy truth must go up and down with
careful search for such relics as they may find in the byways of
folklore. It was from France that the revival of magic came.
Fairy tales reached the French court about 1676, and set a fashion
of simplicity, sometimes real, more often affected. In 1996,
Charles Perrault began to publish (in Moetjen’s Recueil de pièces
curieuses et nouvelles) the famous stories alleged to be written by
his little boy; they came out in a separate volume in 1697, as
Histoires ou Contes du Tems Passé, avec de Moralités ; the frontis-
piece contained the immortal legend, Contes de ma mère l'Oie.
This is not the place to go into the anthropology of fairy tales
in general, or of these fairy tales in particular. It is quite
probable that Perrault's son did actually tell the tales himself to
his father, much as he heard them from his nurse. Their delightful
simplicity made them instantly popular. An English translation
appeared, apparently, in 17291, by Robert Samber. The stories
>
>
1 Advertised in The Monthly Chronicle, March 1729 (Andrew Lang, on the authority
of Austin Dobson, in Perrault's Popular Tales, with Introduction, etc. , 1888). The
earliest surviving copy is the sixth edition, 1764, giving both French and English,
Mrs Trimmer, born in 1741, was familiar with the tales in her childhood.


## p. 375 (#397) ############################################

xvi]
Nursery Rimes
375
passed speedily into chapbooks, as did those of Madame d'Aulnoy
about the same time. It should be added that they were provided
with morals': Red Riding Hood proved that
Wolves for sure there are
Of every sort, and every character;
while Bluebeard exemplified 'curiosity, thou mortal bane. '
So, the fairy tale attained print, and tradition became litera-
ture. About the same period, the other strain of traditional lore,
also, was glorified into printed matter. Nursery rimes have all
manner of origins, and may be detected in allusions long before
they appear whole and unadorned. But, there was, apparently, no
Corpus Poetarum Infantilium till, in 1744, Cooper published
Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book, in two volumes. Here, for
the first time, some unknown hand established a classic. Here
was the nucleus upon which, in all probability, all later collec-
tions--and there was not much to be added to it, were founded.
The rimes, in themselves, do not call for comment. Except for a
few which would offend modern taste, they are the same-verbally,
for all practical purposes-as nurses use today.
No earlier collection, if one was made, survives ; and it is
sixteen years before another is recorded-The Top Book of All;
the date, 1760, is determined by a little woodblock at the end.
This is not entirely a nursery rime book; it contains nine familiar
rimes, Watts's Sluggard, some riddles and three wellknown short
tales. To the same date-but not with any certainty—is ascribed
the famous Gammer Gurton's Garland, published at Stockport:
it is described on the title-page as a new edition, with additions. '
In or about the same year-here, too, there is not any certainty,
for not one copy of the first edition is known—was born the chief
rival of the alleged Gurton as a rimer, mother Goose? Newbery's
surviving copyrights in 1780 included Mother Goose's Melody.
There is reason to believe the book had been in existence for
some time before, though there is no evidence whatever for a
statement sometimes made that the publisher Fleet first issued it
in 1719.
Such is the archaeology of children's books, before the first
great diaskeuast arrived. There were lessonbooks of several
kinds, there were moral treatises in prose and verse, there was a
1 The instructive full title is given in the bibliography of this chapter.
2 The name is, of course, a translation of Mère de l'Oie,who presided over Perrault's
fairy tales. But it is much older. Gammer Gurton and Tom Thumb have a similar
oral antiquity.
6


## p. 376 (#398) ############################################

376
[CH.
Children's Books
mass of oral tradition just creeping into type, there were decayed
adult works. But, all was without form and void. The appearance
of the books that were produced was mean. The trade in them
was spasmodic and unorganised. No one took them seriously or
thought of them as a necessary branch of the commerce in printed
matter. It was a typical eighteenth century business man, John
Newbery, farmer's son, accountant, merchant's assistant, patent-
medicine dealer, printer and publisher, who saw the possibilities
and the openings.
He began to publish books at Reading in
1740, but removed to London in 1744 (first to Devereux court
and then to the address long associated with children's books,
St Paul's churchyard). The first year in the metropolis saw his
first child's book-The Little Pretty Pocket Book. It was a neat,
well-printed volume, with very fair woodcuts. It contains a
dedication 'to the Parents, Guardians and Nurses in Great Britain
and Ireland,' and incitements to games, with moral applications
dragged in. It was designed to 'make Tommy a good Boy and
Polly a good Girl. ' No doubt it did so; and the process must
have been far from disagreeable. It was followed the next year
by three volumes of The Circle of the Sciences. The Lilliputian
Magazine (1751-2), The Governess or Little Female Academy
(by Sarah Fielding, the novelist's sister), The Twelfth Day Gift,
Mother Goose's Melody, her Tales and, most celebrated of all,
Goody Two Shoes', were among his early publications.
The characteristics of Newbery's books were very marked.
They were strongly and yet attractively produced, with good print
and paper. They contained a great variety of matter, and were
thoroughly alive in every way. There is a real personality behind
them, even though they are now as utterly obsolete as their con-
temporary, the dodo (which is illustrated in a Newbery natural
history of 1775). The English is plain and respectable; the
coarseness of earlier, and even some coeval and later, productions
is almost entirely absent. There is a strong vein of honest
vigour running through them---The Twelfth Day Gift has a
frontispiece labelled “Trade and Plumb Cake for ever, Huzza ! '-
and the commercial success of the industrious apprentice is fre-
quently insisted upon. The author-it is not unlikely that
a
1 There is much evidence, amounting almost to certainty, that Goldsmith wrote
Goody Two Shoes, or, at least, had a hand in it. See Welsh's, C. , introduction to his
facsimile reprint of the earliest extant edition (1881). It is also said that Goldsmith
edited Mother Goose's Melody. The evidence is hardly strong enough to make this
nore than a pleasant and credible hypothesis.


## p. 377 (#399) ############################################

>
XVI]
John Newbery
377
Newbery himself is the single individual behind such feigned
benignities as Mrs Lovechild, Tommy Trip and Giles Gingerbread-
is really trying to please children as well as to improve them.
"He called himself their friend, but he was the friend of all man-
kind': Goldsmith spoke from experience.
John Newbery died in 1767, having definitely created a new
branch of literature. His business split into two-one under
Francis Newbery (a nephew) and the other under a second Francis
Newbery (a son) and Thomas Carnan (a stepson). The firms were
not amicable rivals, and Carnan and Francis the younger also
quarrelled and separated, apparently in 1782. Ultimately, 'all the
old publications of Newbery passed into the hands of Elizabeth (the
nephew Francis's widow] and to Harris and his successors? ' The
final legatees of this ancient firm, Messrs Griffith and Farran, sur-
vived into the twentieth century, still publishing children's books.
The trade side of these works is an important one, and it may
be convenient to deal with it at this point. The publisher—in the
eighteenth century still more than half retailer as well as pro-
ducer-had, for obvious reasons, greater power over juvenile books
than over serious adult works. Indeed, he was often the author
himself; the later Newbery's most formidable rivals, Darton and
Harvey, were even artists and engravers (very bad ones) as well.
The publisher determined that momentous detail, the format of
the volume; and it might, with some reason, be contended that his
taste in this direction, from 1750 to 1760 and from 1800 to 1810,
has not been equalled since. Certainly, the gilt and brightly
coloured covers made of Dutch paper-copies so bound are now
rare, and the paper is no longer made—the entire decency and
fitness, as of an Adam house, in margin, type and spacing, the
enduring ink and clean impressions of the best specimens, show a
standard of production at least as well suited to a domestic
interior of Georgian England as more ambitious binding and
typography to more lavish periods. The publisher, too, decided
on the quantity and quality of the illustrations : Bewick, Stothard
and some of the producers of colour-work early in the nineteenth
century reached a very high level of quality, and the quantity was
seldom stinted. He decided, also, as is the custom today, the size
of an edition ; and the numbers, where they can be discovered,
are surprisingly large. One firm, at least, usually printed 2000 for
a first edition, and such works as Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball had
an immediate circulation literally as great as that of a really
1 Welsh, C. , A Bookseller of the Last Century (1885).


## p. 378 (#400) ############################################

378
[CH.
Children's Books
successful novel of today. Moreover, the sales were steady and
longlived. Berquin's Ami des Enfans ran to 20,000 copies in ten
years. A dozen of Priscilla Wakefield's books went into not less
than sixty editions (apart from piracies) in twenty years. Mrs
Trimmer's Robins sold to the extent of two editions every three
years for a whole generation at least. The prices were low, as
expressed in our values ; from sixpence to three shillings and
sixpence, with one and sixpence as a very general average, for
volumes with copperplates; woodblock editions (which tended
to disappear after about 1790, except in chapbooks) were even
cheaper, and coloured plates did not cause any great increase,
mainly, no doubt, because the colouring was done by hand, by
regiments of children, who dabbed on each one colour in one
place! The colours have a "gay grace not always achieved by
more perfect mechanical means. Authors were not highly paid;
but their relations with publishers seem to have been intimate
and pleasant, on the whole : the publisher was a tradesman, but a
man of some dignity as well. After Newbery, many firms specialised
in children's books. The value of juvenile' copyrights was often
considerable ; some works were even worthy of being turned into
'trade' books—issued, that is, by syndicates of publishers. The
story of copyright sales is very suggestive? Piracy abounded.
These business details largely explain the activity that ensued
upon Newbery's death. He and the next generation of his family
made it perfectly clear that there was a chance of supplying
children's books in an adequate format. Commerce was alive to
opportunities, and the creation of a good supply was inevitable
and immediate. And, as for the demand, the epoch which pro-
duced the bluestocking was not likely to omit from its programme
of orderly omniscience the very foundations of taste and learning.
The age of the revolution was an age of education, which was viewed,
on the one hand, as a prophylactic against, and, on the other, as the
most active stimulant of, a new era. But, in some circles, it was
still thought unworthy to write for children. Nearly every author
from 1780 onwards apologises for his or her work in a preface.
One of the best and most popular writers, S. S. , never revealed
that her name was Dorothy Kilner, even though she lived into a
less dignified age. Her Adventures of a Pincushion, Memoirs of
1 This method was still being used by the present writer's grandfather between
1850 and 1860, though, at the same time, Baxter was doing oil-process prints for him.
? See Shaylor, J. , The Fascination of Books (1912), for many examples of sale
catalogues and prices.


## p. 379 (#401) ############################################

xvi)
Sarah Trimmer
379
a Peg-top and Jemima Placid (to name no other works) were all
published either anonymously or under a pseudonym; many pirates
did not even print the pseudonym. They are very unaffected
little tales : ordinary and natural and delightful. , Her sister, as
M. P. , wrote no less popular books. Lady Venn, author of
Cobwebs to Catch Flies, was another secret purveyor to the
nursery : she wrote as Mrs Lovechild and Mrs Teachwell.
To pursue the history of every individual who followed in the
way which Newbery had opened would be endless. Publishers
were eager to publish, the public-full of generous projects and
prolific of new philanthropic societies—not less eager to buy. The
period which ended in 1825 may best be described as one of strife
between two principles. The moral tale,' in those years, reached
its highest development and perished, while the enemy it attacked-
the fairy tale, the element of fantasy and fun--emerged triumphant.
Whatever the drawbacks of the moral tale, it had one con-
spicuous merit, never so fully displayed at other times in the
history of children's books. All its exponents wrote admirable
English and could tell a story. They were the unadvertised lower
ranks of the bluestockings (Hannah More herself wrote treatises
and Sacred Dramas for children, and Mrs Chapone's Letters were
a classic of orthodox educational opinion). They respected them-
selves, their language and their subject, and, at the same time,
though Miss Pinkerton indubitably existed in many quarters, they
seldom (except in prefaces) mistook grandiloquence for ease of
style. They fall, naturally, into groups on the lines of current
thought : religious beliefs and educational theories being the in-
fluential factors.
The established church takes an important, though, from a
literary standpoint, not the foremost, place. Its protagonist in
the nursery was the redoubtable Sarah Trimmer, to whom Cal-
verley applied the only possible adjective-'good Mrs Trimmer. '
Mrs Trimmer wrote only one really notable child's book, apart from
tracts and educational works ; but that book, first published in
1786, is still being printed, published and read. Probably, it
would not be recognised by its original title : Fabulous Histories :
Designed for the Instruction of Children, respecting their Treat-
ment of Animals. Here are to be met those excellent little robins
- The History of the Robins was the later title-Pecksy, Flapsy,
Robin and Dick; here, too, the learned pig is gravely discussed.
Even though the story is unflinchingly didactic, it has everywhere
naturalness and charm. Its earnestness is so simple, and the


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380
[CH.
Children's Books
6
author's own interest in the narrative so clear, that age has not
destroyed its individuality. It contains, incidentally, a footnote
which lights up, as by a flash, the whole conception of moral tales.
A mockingbird is introduced into an English scene, and the author,
always careful of truth, warns the reader that the mock-bird is
properly a native of America, but is introduced here for the sake
of the moral. ' Volumes could not say more.
The Robins is Mrs Trimmer's main claim upon the memory of
children; but, in writing about children, rather than directly for
them, she wielded, at the time, even more power. As a staunch
churchwoman, she was desperately afraid of Jacobinical tendencies;
she believed a vast French conspiracy existed to destroy Chris-
tianity in England, and she kept a very wary eye upon both books
and education. Her zeal went into details too minute for mention
here. Its most relevant excursion was a very surprising adventure
into fairyland. In The Guardian of Education (a polemical
magazine she conducted from 1802 to 1804), she mentioned chil-
dren's books current half a century before, among them some of
Perrault's tales. A correspondent at once complained and asked
for greater severity of judgment because Cinderella was
perhaps one of the most exceptionable books that was ever written for
children. . . It paints the worst passions that can enter into the human heart,
and of which little children should, if possible, be totally ignorant; such as
envy, jealousy, a dislike to mothers-in-law (sic) and half-sisters, vanity, a love
of dress, etc. , etc.
Mrs Trimmer, who, by her own confession, had been brought up
on Perrault, agreed that this lady was right. She was supported,
a little later, by a tremendous manifesto of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, expressly denouncing such stories. It is
difficult, indeed, to find any toleration of fairyland in these stern
moralists.
The other wing of church activity was represented by Mrs Sher-
wood, and she, too, bore witness against fairies. In 1820, she
edited Sarah Fielding's Governess. This, probably, is the fiercest
example of editorial recension in the whole of literature ; it far
surpasses Bentley's revision of Milton. The changes are purely
arbitrary; the book) was virtually rewritten. Mrs Teachum's
'Little Female Academy' was moved from the north to the south
of England, and every single story told in the course of the
narrative was changed. In the original, there had been two
fairy tales : these were cut out because such stories 'can scarcely
ever be rendered profitable. . . You are, I know, strongly impressed
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xvi]
Mrs Sherwood
381
with the doctrine of the depravity of human nature, and it would
be quite impossible to introduce that doctrine as a 'motive of
action in such tales. '
Mrs Sherwood, however, is better known for her original work.
There can be few persons born before about 1870 who were not
brought up on The Fairchild Family (written in India in 1813,
but not published till 1818: other parts were added to 1847).
Like The Robins, it is still published-usually with much pietistic
matter left out and read. Of all the moral fabulists, except
Maria Edgeworth, Mrs Sherwood was the best story-teller. Her
English is of an extraordinary simplicity and lucidity, and, though
she accumulates an immense wealth of detail in her scenes, they
are invariably as clearcut and finely moulded as a good silhouette.
The tremendous visit to the gallows in The Fairchild Family
is a masterpiece of horror: it has won praise from the most
unsympathetic critics. And who, reading that still vivid book,
has not hungered to eat the meals generously and often described
in it? No incidents in books for children, except, perhaps, a few
in Grimm, and in one or two isolated stories, cleave to, and inhere
in, the brain through life as do Mrs Sherwood's.
She wrote other very popular books. Little Henry and his
Bearer (1815) is a classic of missionary work; it echoed and
reinforced the efforts made by its author in India with the help
of Henry Martyn. It was translated into many tongues, including
Chinese. Susan Grey (1802) was written for the elder girls in
a Sunday-school. Henry Milner (1822–7) was the story of a
model boy and a tutor whose complacent virtues make even the
egregious Mr Barlow, of Sandford and Merton, seem unen-
lightened. The Infants Progress from the Valley of Destruction
to Everlasting Glory was one of the numerous adaptations of
Bunyan to particular beliefs and circumstances. Mrs Sherwood,
in spite of a prodigiously active life of benevolence and domesti-
city, wrote almost to her dying day; and, with the little stories
'written up' to stock illustrations for various publishers, she has
well over three hundred books to her credit. Practically, all of them
of any importance introduce her strongly marked religious views.
Enthusiasts are the best mirror of tendencies; and Mrs Trimmer
and Mrs Sherwood were both enthusiasts. The moral tendency
is much less explicit in other writers. Least of all is it intrusive
in the best of them; the best, perhaps, of all writers for children-
Maria Edgeworth as her novels prove, was, also, an inspired
See ante, chap. IIII.


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story-teller. In sheer skill of construction alone, her Parent's
Assistant (1796 ; enlarged in later editions), Moral Tales (1801),
Harry and Lucy and Frank are masterpieces of the inevitable.
The moral, it is true, is always perfectly clear, but it is a sympa-
thetic moral—it is a part of universal justice and human nature.
The grace and tender humour of these little tales has never been
surpassed ; Scott's often quoted eulogy of Simple Susan—'when
the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for
it but to put down the book and cry'—is hardly a hyperbole.
The tales were written chiefly to illustrate and work out Maria
Edgeworth's father's system of education, which, in turn, was an
offshoot of Rousseau's doctrine. So, also, was Sandford and
Merton', in which the eccentric personality of Thomas Day found
a restrained expression. It is a work now in manner and form
quite obsolete, and its lack of humour, often parodied, will
probably prevent its ever being seriously considered again by
appraisers of children's books. But, if the character of Mr Barlow
can be got over, the story—or its string of stories—is full of
interest. It has a good deal of social criticism implicit in many of
its details. And the episode in which Harry Sandford is called
a blackguard, and fights, touches an unusual stratum of human
nature for the moral tale. Day also wrote The History of Little
Jack (1790).
French influence—as Mrs Trimmer cried in alarmed accents -
was rife in the nursery. As early as 1740, a Spectacle de la Nature
had been translated successfully. Arnaud Berquin, 'surnommé à
juste titre l'Ami des Enfants, published the work from which his
'just title' comes--L'Ami des Enfans-in 1782 (translated in
1783). It was successful alike in France, in French in England
and in English. He wrote, also, Le Petit Grandisson, a senti-
mental tale which was translated into English, and himself (by a
pleasant irony) turned Mrs Trimmer's Familiar Introduction to
the Knowledge of Nature into French. The very popular Looking
Glass for the Mind was a compilation from his works. By him
stands another Rousseauist, Mme de Genlis ; her treatise on
education, Adèle et Théodore (1782), was translated (1783) and
her Tales of the Castle (1784) were very popular in an English
version (1785). Miss Edgeworth, Barbauld and Aikin, and others
were given a French dress, and many of the quaker tales of Mary
Elliott (afterwards Mrs Belson) were produced in both tongues
1 Vol. 1, 1783; vol. 11, 1786; vol. 11, 1789; translated into French--probably by
Berquin-in an VI de la République, 1798.


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XVI] The Moral Tale in Verse 383
simultaneously. There was clearly, in spite of the revolution,
much commerce of juvenile ideals.
Quakers were very active during this period, though most of
their works have stood the test of time very ill. Mary Elliott pro-
duced a number of short tales (Aunt Mary's Tales, Tales for
Boys, The Rambles of a Butterfly and others) between 1810 and
1820, all of which sold largely. Priscilla Wakefield has already
been mentioned: she wrote some sixteen works between 1791
and 1810, the best-known being Mental Improvement, Juvenile
Anecdotes, Leisure Hours, An Introduction to Botany and
Instinct Displayed. She was a remarkable woman, largely re-
sponsible for the character of her grandson, Edward Gibbon
Wakefield. She has fallen into oblivion ; yet, admirers from
America made special pilgrimages to see her in her old age.
Lancaster 'backed' her as against Mrs Trimmer. Minor fabulists
include Mary Mister (The Adventures of a Doll, 1816), Miss Sand-
ham, Maria Crabbe, Esther Hewlett, I. Day, Arabella Argus (The
Juvenile Spectator and Adventures of a Donkey), and many
others.
To another branch of nonconformity we owe poems that have
become proverbial. It has been alleged that Ann Taylor's My
Mother is the most often parodied poem ever written; but Twinkle,
Twinkle, Little Star must run it very close; while the splendidly
martial beat of
The dog will come when it is called,
The cat will walk away,
not merely stirs recollections of infancy in numerous breasts, but
offers some shrewd facts about natural history. It is by Adelaide
O'Keeffe (daughter of the minor dramatist of that name), who
collaborated with Anne and Jane Taylor in Original Poems
(1804—5); her name was dropped in later editions for unknown
She wrote other and inferior volumes independently.
The joint collection is the first instance of the moral tale in verse.
It is modelled, avowedly, on Isaac Watts, but with the addition
of dramatic interest. It contains awful warnings, poems of crime
and punishment, in which a fault is proved to be a fault by some
terrible lesson: a boy who fishes is caught on a meathook, a girl
plays with matches and is burnt to death, and so on.
in their day, were a new idea, well carried out and enormously
successful. Hymns for Infant Minds (1808) and Rhymes for the
Nursery (1806) are less minatory; they have a gentle piety which
can never be valueless, especially when conveyed with aptness of
reasons.
The poems,
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[CH.
language and metrical skill. The Taylors' poems simply say them-
selves; the metre is as sure and inevitable as the moral.
The gifted family of Taylor was, also, responsible for a good
many other works. The father-a man of great originality and
character—was an engraver and a writer. Mrs Taylor wrote
didactic works; Jefferys wrote ; Isaac wrote ; Anne and Jane
wrote, apart from their poems; their descendants wrote. “It was
almost impossible to be a Taylor and not write. '
Imitations of such a success were at once forthcoming; they
We .
have not ceased to this day. The best are Mrs Turner's. Her
Cautionary Stories are contained in the volumes prettily named
The Daisy (1807) and The Cowslip.
Miss Mrs Turner alone of the Taylors' rivals has a facility equal to
theirs ; her metrical skill is unfailing; her language may be the
merest prose, but it goes with an infectious swing. Charles and
Mary Lamb, in Poetry for Children (1808), essayed the same kind
of performance, not without success; but they hardly succeeded
in going beyond prettiness and gentleness. The Taylors and
Niiss Mrs Turner were more resolute moralists and less unfaltering
craftsmen.
One other poet may be mentioned here. William Blake's
Songs of Innocence (1789) were produced by their creator in so
peculiar a way that they had not any part in the real history of
children's books. It required a later generation to rescue them,
as, in other ways, Herrick and Traherne were rescued, from an
accidental obscurity.
Apart from propagandists and retributory moralists, much
good work of a plain kind appeared in various ways. The most
eminent of these less pronounced philanthropists were Dr Aikin
and his sister Mrs Barbauld, whose Evenings at Home is a com-
panionable and homely miscellany. Hymns in Prose is a series
of nature-studies in really fine prose; extracts taken out of
their context might easily today be mistaken for simple passages
from Maeterlinck. Easy Lessons are what the title claims.