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.
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.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v11
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
## p. 380 (#402) ############################################
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
>
## p. 381 (#403) ############################################
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.
## p. 382 (#404) ############################################
382
[CH.
Children's Books
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.
## p. 383 (#405) ############################################
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,
>
## p. 384 (#406) ############################################
384
Children's Books
[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.
Mrs Hofland-The Son of a Genius (1816), The Clergyman's
Widow (1812) and Theodore were among her best-known books-
was more stagey and pompous, without the clearness of equally
determined but less heavy moralists. Maria Hack, another quaker,
wrote very successful Fireside Stories (1825), a good little moral
tale, Harry Beaufoy (1821) and several pleasant semi-educatioval
works. Agnes Strickland's early work—The M088 House (1822),
for instance-was in the form of instructive fiction. Mrs Pilkington,
## p. 385 (#407) ############################################
XVI]
Charles and Mary Lamb
385
who took to writing because of her straitened circumstances,
concocted some Biography for Boys (1808) and for Girls (1809),
an abridged translation of Marmontel's Moral Tales and, among
other works, the portentously named Marvellous Adventures: or,
the Vicissitudes of a Cat (1802).
The most illustrious author who ever wrote for children (and
yet Goldsmith and Dickens and Thackeray might dispute the title,
though they did not write so much) has been reserved till the end
of the moralists. Charles and Mary Lamb's Mrs Leicester's School
(1807) was certainly a moral tale; rather a dull one in itself, but
interesting because of its author and its style. Equally certainly
Prince Dorus (1811) and The King and Queen of Hearts (1805)
were not moral tales; nor were they, for that matter, either a
commercial success or a literary production in any way worthy of
Lamb. They belong to the reaction against morality, and would
not attract much attention but for the names of Lamb and Godwin.
The Poems have already been mentioned. Tales from Shake-
speare (mainly Mary's) written for Godwin's neat little Juvenile
Library—have a curious charm: it would be possible to read
them in ignorance and be sure that they were the work of a
competent writer. On the other hand, for their particular purpose,
they have strong defects. The language is very long-winded for
children, and the train of thought too often adult; while they
frequently give a very incomplete version of the plays? .
But though, in the eyes of reviewers and the chroniclers of the
serious, the moral tale occupied the larger part of the nursery,
the ‘objectionable' fairy tale and its offshoots still persisted.
Indeed, like the fabled camomile, the harder you trod it, the faster
it grew. In the chapbooks, it and non-moral rimes—about Jack
and Jill and the Babes in the Wood and their peers—had an
inglorious popularity. But, in the editions with coloured illustra-
tions which poured from the press between 1800 and about 1830,
it endued fine and honourable raiment. The best extant col-
lection of these works contains about 400 volumes, which it is
obviously impossible to examine in detail. Ex pede Herculem.
They have a strong family likeness, for the excellent reason that
they were produced imitatively to suit a fashion. That fashion was
set, or, at any rate, rendered dominant, by the best of all these
picture books—William Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball (1806–7), written
for his little son Robert. There is not any moral here; the book is
nothing but fancifulness and graceful frivolity. There were hosts
1 Lee, Sidney, preface to The Shakespeare Story Book, by Mary Macleod (1902).
25
a
B, L, XL.
CH, XVI.
## p. 386 (#408) ############################################
386
[ch.
Children's Books
of imitations, the best and the best-known being Mrs Dorset's
Peacock at Home and Lion's Masquerade. They nearly all ap-
peared in the same year, 1807, which reveals the imitative
vigilance of the publishing trade. Of The Butterfly's Ball and
The Peacock at Home, 40,000 copies were sold that year.
Akin in pictorial appeal, but of more pedestrian execution,
were many facetious jingles and story books, for the most part
derivatives of the nursery rime. The Life and History of A
Apple Pie, The Dame and her Donkey's Five (1823), The Gaping
Wide-mouthed Waddling Frog (1823; a version of an ancient
cumulative rime that appears in The Top Book of All, in 1760)
were among the most noteworthy. Dame Wiggins of Lee (1823),
(
of this numerous fellowship, attracted the attention and eulogy of
Ruskin. The History of the Sixteen Wonderful Old Women
(1821) contains the first instance of the metrical form commonly
called the limerick, and usually ascribed to Edward Lear; it
is here used, with skill and finish, for some preposterous
adventures.
The importance of these works lies not in their individual
merits but in their collective mass. Public opinion was changing.
The ‘renascence of wonder' had spread to the nursery, and a new
age was at hand. It is hardly possible to treat of later books
within the limits of this work; their numbers and variety defy
compression. The reign of Victoria, almost from its inception, saw
children's books much as they are now, in their morale and ideals.
Fresh ideas came, and new methods of production changed the
outward appearance of the nursery library. But, in essentials, it
was full-grown; it was emancipated from the tyranny of dogma,
and the seeds of all its developments had taken root.
The modern era can be dated almost by one book-George
Cruikshank's edition of the German Popular Stories of the
brothers Grimm (1824—6). Once again, English childhood re-
entered fairyland by foreign aid. The immediate popularity of the
book was evidence of the change in taste. A further step towards
freedom and aesthetic attractiveness was made by Sir Henry Cole
("Felix Summerly') and the enlightened publisher, Joseph Cundall,
with The Home Treasury; while Catherine Sinclair's delightful
Holiday House (1839) showed that not only was amusement harm-
less, but naughtiness itself might be venial and even pleasant.
The moral tale was killed, and the crudities of the rival 'pretty
gilt toys for girls and boys' were reborn and regenerated in the
work of greater artists and more ambitious publishers. Morality
## p. 387 (#409) ############################################
6
Xvi]
Later Writers
387
turned itself to usefulness: the Howitts (Mary first introduced
Hans Christian Andersen to English readers), Peter Parley'
(S. G. Goodrich was the most active claimant to the pseudonym)
and similar writers composed their excellent books and poems
from a plain, serious point of view—they furnished matter of fact,
cheerfully phrased, not matter of doctrine, aggressively insisted
upon. Harriet Martineau and others wrote stories which were
nothing but stories, and in which the wider range of human know-
ledge enormously increased the narrative interest.
The logical coincided with the historical development. Modern
fairy tales began to be written, and the higher kind of levity
produced nonsense. Lewis Carroll's two Alice books (1866 and
1872) and Sylvie and Bruno (1889) were works of genius; but
they could not have won a hearing and undying applause if
the minds of the audience had not been prepared by what had
gone before. The fairy tales of Andersen, Kingsley, Jean Ingelow,
George MacDonald, Ruskin, Thackeray, Mark Lemon and other
writers still living were not glorified folklore; but they could not
have been published-perhaps not even written—but for the glory
that had come to folklore after repression. Only an age ready
to be childish after having learnt the hopelessness of tacking
morals on to fairy tales could have welcomed Lear's Book of
Nonsense (1846). Magazines of wide scope came with the 'sixties.
Education was utterly divorced from pleasure—in books. Con-
currently with the rapid increase of the adult novel, and, as the
natural consequence of the relief from insistence upon 'instruction,'
stories pure and simple grew in favour and numbers—stories either
of real life, like Miss Yonge's or Mrs Ewing's, or of genuinely
romantic adventure, like the tales of Ballantyne, Marryat, ‘Percy
St John' and inany others; nor were the adult works of Marryat,
Kingsley, Lytton, Stevenson and others forbidden. They cul-
minated in the modern school of juvenile fiction, adult in form
and young only in style and psychology. Henceforward, indeed,
children's books demand not history, but criticism.
25_2
## p. 388 (#410) ############################################
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
CHAPTER I
EDMUND BURKE
I. COLLECTED EDITIONS
A. Works
Works. 8 vols. 1792-1827. (Vols. IV-VIII, ed. King, W. , bishop of Rochester. )
Works. Ed. by Laurence, F. and King, W. 16 vols. 1803-27.
Works. 9 vols. Boston, 1839. Revised, 12 vols. 1865-7.
Works and Correspondence. 8 vols. 1852.
Works. 6 vols. Speeches. 2 vols. (Bohn. ) 1854-5.
Select Works: 1. Thoughts on the present discontents and Speeches on
America. 2. Reflections on the French Revolution. 3. Four Letters
on the Regicide Peace. Ed. Payne, E. J. Oxford, 1874-8.
B. Speeches and Letters
Speeches in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall. 4 vols. 1816.
Epistolary correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke and Dr French
Laurence. 1827.
Correspondence between 1744 and 1797. Edd. Fitzwilliam, Earl, and Bourke,
Sir R. 4 vols. 1844.
Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish affairs. Ed. Arnold, M. 1881.
American Speeches and Letters. Ed. Law, Hugh. (Everyman's Library. )
1908.
Correspondence of Edmund Burke and William Windham. Ed. Gilson, J. P.
(Roxburghe Club. ) 1910.
II. SEPARATE WORKS
A Vindication of Natural Society in a Letter to Lord by a late Noble
Writer. 1756. Rptd Oxford, 1796; London, 1858.
A Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful. 1756.
Transl. into French, 1803; German, 1773; and Spanish, 1807.
An Account of the European settlements in America. (Burke revised and
contributed to this work, which was probably written by William Burke. )
2 vols. 1757.
The Annual Register. 1759, etc. (Burke supplied or inspired the annual
survey of events. Some of these surveys were printed in a separate
form in 1763 as A Compleat History of the late War. )
## p. 389 (#411) ############################################
CH. 1]
Edmund Burke
389
A Short Account of a Short Administration. 1766.
Observations on a late State of the Nation. 1769.
Thoughts on the cause of the present Discontents. 1770.
Observations on Modern Gardening illustrated by descriptions. (Attributed
to Burke, but really by Whately, T. ) 1770.
A Speech on American taxation. 1774.
Transl. into German, 1864.
A Speech on moving his resolutions for conciliation with the Colonies, 1775.
Transl. into German, 1864.
A Letter from E.
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
## p. 380 (#402) ############################################
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
>
## p. 381 (#403) ############################################
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.
## p. 382 (#404) ############################################
382
[CH.
Children's Books
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.
## p. 383 (#405) ############################################
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,
>
## p. 384 (#406) ############################################
384
Children's Books
[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.
Mrs Hofland-The Son of a Genius (1816), The Clergyman's
Widow (1812) and Theodore were among her best-known books-
was more stagey and pompous, without the clearness of equally
determined but less heavy moralists. Maria Hack, another quaker,
wrote very successful Fireside Stories (1825), a good little moral
tale, Harry Beaufoy (1821) and several pleasant semi-educatioval
works. Agnes Strickland's early work—The M088 House (1822),
for instance-was in the form of instructive fiction. Mrs Pilkington,
## p. 385 (#407) ############################################
XVI]
Charles and Mary Lamb
385
who took to writing because of her straitened circumstances,
concocted some Biography for Boys (1808) and for Girls (1809),
an abridged translation of Marmontel's Moral Tales and, among
other works, the portentously named Marvellous Adventures: or,
the Vicissitudes of a Cat (1802).
The most illustrious author who ever wrote for children (and
yet Goldsmith and Dickens and Thackeray might dispute the title,
though they did not write so much) has been reserved till the end
of the moralists. Charles and Mary Lamb's Mrs Leicester's School
(1807) was certainly a moral tale; rather a dull one in itself, but
interesting because of its author and its style. Equally certainly
Prince Dorus (1811) and The King and Queen of Hearts (1805)
were not moral tales; nor were they, for that matter, either a
commercial success or a literary production in any way worthy of
Lamb. They belong to the reaction against morality, and would
not attract much attention but for the names of Lamb and Godwin.
The Poems have already been mentioned. Tales from Shake-
speare (mainly Mary's) written for Godwin's neat little Juvenile
Library—have a curious charm: it would be possible to read
them in ignorance and be sure that they were the work of a
competent writer. On the other hand, for their particular purpose,
they have strong defects. The language is very long-winded for
children, and the train of thought too often adult; while they
frequently give a very incomplete version of the plays? .
But though, in the eyes of reviewers and the chroniclers of the
serious, the moral tale occupied the larger part of the nursery,
the ‘objectionable' fairy tale and its offshoots still persisted.
Indeed, like the fabled camomile, the harder you trod it, the faster
it grew. In the chapbooks, it and non-moral rimes—about Jack
and Jill and the Babes in the Wood and their peers—had an
inglorious popularity. But, in the editions with coloured illustra-
tions which poured from the press between 1800 and about 1830,
it endued fine and honourable raiment. The best extant col-
lection of these works contains about 400 volumes, which it is
obviously impossible to examine in detail. Ex pede Herculem.
They have a strong family likeness, for the excellent reason that
they were produced imitatively to suit a fashion. That fashion was
set, or, at any rate, rendered dominant, by the best of all these
picture books—William Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball (1806–7), written
for his little son Robert. There is not any moral here; the book is
nothing but fancifulness and graceful frivolity. There were hosts
1 Lee, Sidney, preface to The Shakespeare Story Book, by Mary Macleod (1902).
25
a
B, L, XL.
CH, XVI.
## p. 386 (#408) ############################################
386
[ch.
Children's Books
of imitations, the best and the best-known being Mrs Dorset's
Peacock at Home and Lion's Masquerade. They nearly all ap-
peared in the same year, 1807, which reveals the imitative
vigilance of the publishing trade. Of The Butterfly's Ball and
The Peacock at Home, 40,000 copies were sold that year.
Akin in pictorial appeal, but of more pedestrian execution,
were many facetious jingles and story books, for the most part
derivatives of the nursery rime. The Life and History of A
Apple Pie, The Dame and her Donkey's Five (1823), The Gaping
Wide-mouthed Waddling Frog (1823; a version of an ancient
cumulative rime that appears in The Top Book of All, in 1760)
were among the most noteworthy. Dame Wiggins of Lee (1823),
(
of this numerous fellowship, attracted the attention and eulogy of
Ruskin. The History of the Sixteen Wonderful Old Women
(1821) contains the first instance of the metrical form commonly
called the limerick, and usually ascribed to Edward Lear; it
is here used, with skill and finish, for some preposterous
adventures.
The importance of these works lies not in their individual
merits but in their collective mass. Public opinion was changing.
The ‘renascence of wonder' had spread to the nursery, and a new
age was at hand. It is hardly possible to treat of later books
within the limits of this work; their numbers and variety defy
compression. The reign of Victoria, almost from its inception, saw
children's books much as they are now, in their morale and ideals.
Fresh ideas came, and new methods of production changed the
outward appearance of the nursery library. But, in essentials, it
was full-grown; it was emancipated from the tyranny of dogma,
and the seeds of all its developments had taken root.
The modern era can be dated almost by one book-George
Cruikshank's edition of the German Popular Stories of the
brothers Grimm (1824—6). Once again, English childhood re-
entered fairyland by foreign aid. The immediate popularity of the
book was evidence of the change in taste. A further step towards
freedom and aesthetic attractiveness was made by Sir Henry Cole
("Felix Summerly') and the enlightened publisher, Joseph Cundall,
with The Home Treasury; while Catherine Sinclair's delightful
Holiday House (1839) showed that not only was amusement harm-
less, but naughtiness itself might be venial and even pleasant.
The moral tale was killed, and the crudities of the rival 'pretty
gilt toys for girls and boys' were reborn and regenerated in the
work of greater artists and more ambitious publishers. Morality
## p. 387 (#409) ############################################
6
Xvi]
Later Writers
387
turned itself to usefulness: the Howitts (Mary first introduced
Hans Christian Andersen to English readers), Peter Parley'
(S. G. Goodrich was the most active claimant to the pseudonym)
and similar writers composed their excellent books and poems
from a plain, serious point of view—they furnished matter of fact,
cheerfully phrased, not matter of doctrine, aggressively insisted
upon. Harriet Martineau and others wrote stories which were
nothing but stories, and in which the wider range of human know-
ledge enormously increased the narrative interest.
The logical coincided with the historical development. Modern
fairy tales began to be written, and the higher kind of levity
produced nonsense. Lewis Carroll's two Alice books (1866 and
1872) and Sylvie and Bruno (1889) were works of genius; but
they could not have won a hearing and undying applause if
the minds of the audience had not been prepared by what had
gone before. The fairy tales of Andersen, Kingsley, Jean Ingelow,
George MacDonald, Ruskin, Thackeray, Mark Lemon and other
writers still living were not glorified folklore; but they could not
have been published-perhaps not even written—but for the glory
that had come to folklore after repression. Only an age ready
to be childish after having learnt the hopelessness of tacking
morals on to fairy tales could have welcomed Lear's Book of
Nonsense (1846). Magazines of wide scope came with the 'sixties.
Education was utterly divorced from pleasure—in books. Con-
currently with the rapid increase of the adult novel, and, as the
natural consequence of the relief from insistence upon 'instruction,'
stories pure and simple grew in favour and numbers—stories either
of real life, like Miss Yonge's or Mrs Ewing's, or of genuinely
romantic adventure, like the tales of Ballantyne, Marryat, ‘Percy
St John' and inany others; nor were the adult works of Marryat,
Kingsley, Lytton, Stevenson and others forbidden. They cul-
minated in the modern school of juvenile fiction, adult in form
and young only in style and psychology. Henceforward, indeed,
children's books demand not history, but criticism.
25_2
## p. 388 (#410) ############################################
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
CHAPTER I
EDMUND BURKE
I. COLLECTED EDITIONS
A. Works
Works. 8 vols. 1792-1827. (Vols. IV-VIII, ed. King, W. , bishop of Rochester. )
Works. Ed. by Laurence, F. and King, W. 16 vols. 1803-27.
Works. 9 vols. Boston, 1839. Revised, 12 vols. 1865-7.
Works and Correspondence. 8 vols. 1852.
Works. 6 vols. Speeches. 2 vols. (Bohn. ) 1854-5.
Select Works: 1. Thoughts on the present discontents and Speeches on
America. 2. Reflections on the French Revolution. 3. Four Letters
on the Regicide Peace. Ed. Payne, E. J. Oxford, 1874-8.
B. Speeches and Letters
Speeches in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall. 4 vols. 1816.
Epistolary correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke and Dr French
Laurence. 1827.
Correspondence between 1744 and 1797. Edd. Fitzwilliam, Earl, and Bourke,
Sir R. 4 vols. 1844.
Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish affairs. Ed. Arnold, M. 1881.
American Speeches and Letters. Ed. Law, Hugh. (Everyman's Library. )
1908.
Correspondence of Edmund Burke and William Windham. Ed. Gilson, J. P.
(Roxburghe Club. ) 1910.
II. SEPARATE WORKS
A Vindication of Natural Society in a Letter to Lord by a late Noble
Writer. 1756. Rptd Oxford, 1796; London, 1858.
A Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful. 1756.
Transl. into French, 1803; German, 1773; and Spanish, 1807.
An Account of the European settlements in America. (Burke revised and
contributed to this work, which was probably written by William Burke. )
2 vols. 1757.
The Annual Register. 1759, etc. (Burke supplied or inspired the annual
survey of events. Some of these surveys were printed in a separate
form in 1763 as A Compleat History of the late War. )
## p. 389 (#411) ############################################
CH. 1]
Edmund Burke
389
A Short Account of a Short Administration. 1766.
Observations on a late State of the Nation. 1769.
Thoughts on the cause of the present Discontents. 1770.
Observations on Modern Gardening illustrated by descriptions. (Attributed
to Burke, but really by Whately, T. ) 1770.
A Speech on American taxation. 1774.
Transl. into German, 1864.
A Speech on moving his resolutions for conciliation with the Colonies, 1775.
Transl. into German, 1864.
A Letter from E.
