THE LILLIPUTIAN LIBRARY
Locke and the baby Spectator—Gulliver in the nursery—The
children’s bookseller—_A Little Pretty Pocket Book_, _The
Circle of the Sciences_ and _The Philosophy of Tops and
Balls_—Mr. Newbery’s shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard—_The
Lilliputian Magazine_—“The History of Mr. Thomas Trip”—Nursery
“Richardsons”—_Mother Goose’s Melody_—“A very great Writer
of very little Books”—_The History of Goody Two-Shoes_ as an
epitome of the Lilliputian Library—The question of Goldsmith’s
authorship—Late “Lilliputians”—The Wyse Chylde in many
rôles—_Juvenile Trials_—_The Juvenile Biographer_—Lilliputian
Letters—A hint of revolution—The new _Tatler_ and _Spectator_—A
farthing sugar-paper series—Lilliputian books in the provinces.
For every parent that read Locke’s _Thoughts_, a hundred took his ideas
at second hand from _The Spectator_. Many, indeed, seem to have confused
his notion of childhood with the description of the baby Addison, who
threw away his rattle before he was two months old, and would not make
use of his coral until they had taken away the bells from it.
It was no new thing to regard a child as a small man or woman. Since
Shakespeare’s time, children had followed the fashions of their elders.
But the tastes of grown-up Elizabethans were not so different from those
of children. Never, until the eighteenth century, had a child been
taught to think and act like a man of middle age. The little Georgian
walked gravely where his for-bears danced, and was expected to read
dwarf essays, extracts from Addison and Pope, and little novels after
Richardson.
Swift’s engrossing pictures of Lilliput had no sooner captured the
nursery than grown-up persons began to fancy themselves in the part of
Gulliver stooping to instruct a little nation; and the logical outcome of
this was a “Lilliputian Library”.
The ingenious artist of an older generation, who could put “all th’
Iliads in a Nut” must have passed on his secret to the makers of
toy-books; and of these the first and greatest was John Newbery, a
descendant of the very Newbery who, in the sixteenth century, had
published the rhyme of the “great Marchaunt Man”.
There is no better portrait of John Newbery than the one drawn by
Goldsmith in _The Vicar of Wakefield_. That “good-natured man” with his
“red pimpled face” who befriended Dr. Primrose when he lay sick at a
roadside inn, was “no other than the philanthropic bookseller of St.
Paul’s Churchyard, who has written so many little books for children”.
Goldsmith was writing for Newbery between 1762 and 1767, and on more than
one occasion he, like his Vicar, “borrowed a few pieces” from the kindly
publisher. He could not have chosen a more graceful way of thanking him,
nor one more likely to give him pleasure, than by thus imitating Mr.
Newbery’s own method of internal advertisement, associating him with
those “little books for children”, and adding that “he called himself
their friend, but he was the friend of all mankind”.
The rest of the passage recalls Dr. Johnson’s caricature of Newbery as
“Jack Whirler,” in _The Idler_:
“Overwhelmed as he is with business, his chief desire is to have still
more. Every new proposal takes possession of his thoughts; he soon
balances probabilities, engages in the project, brings it almost to
completion and then forsakes it for another.”
But Goldsmith again lays stress on his pet project:
“He was no sooner alighted but he was in haste to be gone; for he was
ever on business of the utmost importance, and was at that time actually
compiling materials for the history of one Mr. Thomas Trip.”
An account of John Newbery’s career would itself furnish matter for a
children’s book. He was a very Whittington of booksellers—a farmer’s son
who made his way in the world “by his talents and industry and a great
love of books”. Every day of his life was an adventure, and he never lost
his Pepysian interest in men and things. Goldsmith’s story of the inn (or
its counterpart) might almost have come out of the pocket-book in which
Mr. Newbery kept a record of his journey through England in 1740, with
notes of his various “projects” and purchases.[40]
It was at Reading, where he had begun his trade of printer and publisher,
that he produced his first children’s book: _Spiritual Songs for
Children_, by one of the many imitators of Dr. Watts;[41] but the genuine
“Newberys” appeared after he settled in London, first at the Bible and
Crown, without Temple Bar, and afterwards at the famous little shop in
St. Paul’s Churchyard.
He began with miscellanies—quaint imitations of the periodicals,
announced by whimsical “advertisements”, and professing the aims and
methods of John Locke: _A Little Pretty Pocket Book_ (1744),[42] and _The
Lilliputian Magazine_, advertised in the _General Evening Post_, March 4,
1751.
Two quotations in the _Pocket Book_ suggest a connection between two
prevailing interests of the day, Education and Landscape-gardening. The
first is from Dryden:
“Children, like tender Osiers, take the Bow
And as they first are fashioned always grow”;
the second from Pope:
“Just as the Twig is bent the Tree’s inclined,
’Tis Education forms the vulgar Mind”.
But the prefatory letter addressed “To all Parents, Guardians,
Governesses, etc.”, illustrates the difference between the “fashioning”
of trees and children. It is all pure Locke:
“Would you have a virtuous Son, instil into him the Principles of
Morality early.... Would you have a wise Son, teach him to reason early.
Let him read and make him understand what he reads. No Sentence should be
passed over without a strict Examination of the Truth of it.... Subdue
your children’s Passions, curb their Temper and make them subservient to
the Rules of Reason; and this is not to be done by Chiding, Whipping or
severe Treatment, but by Reasoning and mild Discipline.”
So much for the Parents who bought the _Pretty Pocket Book_. The rest is
a judicious mixture of Amusement and Instruction for its readers. There
are alphabets big and little, “select Proverbs for the use of children”,
_Moralités_ in plenty; but by the precise authority of Mr. Locke, there
are also pictures of sorts, songs and games and rhymed fables. There is
even a germ of the “Moral Tale” in accounts of good children, set down
somewhat in the manner of seventeenth century “Characters”.
Between this and _The Lilliputian Magazine_ came an instructive
“Snuff-box” series: The _Circle of the Sciences_,[43] described in the
Advertisement as “a compendious library, whereby each Branch of Polite
Learning is rendered extremely easy and instructive”. But the Newbery
Pedant is never quite serious. When, later, he sets himself to adapt the
Newtonian System “to the Capacities of young Gentlemen and Ladies”, he
does it in a _Philosophy_ of _Tops and Balls_,[44] and seems immensely
diverted by this notion of making the Giant Instruction stoop to play.
In 1745 John Newbery left the Bible and Crown, and set up at the Bible
and Sun, near the Chapter House in St. Paul’s Churchyard. By this time he
had become “a merchant in medicines as well as books” and had acquired
a partnership in the sale of the famous fever powders of his friend Dr.
James, which he advertised with other remedies in his nursery books,
often working them into the story.
Like all really busy people, he could always find time for a new
enterprise; but the “little books” were no mere relaxation from serious
work. His son says that at this time he was “in the full employment of
his talents in writing and publishing books of amusement and instruction
for children”, and adds that “the call for them was immense, an edition
of many thousands being sometimes exhausted during the Christmas
holidays”.[45]
This, in fact, was a favourite “project” of Mr. Newbery’s, never forsaken
for another, but continued up to the time of his death.
One can imagine him, delighted as Mr. Pepys with his puppet
show,—inspecting the woodcuts, examining different patterns of Dutch
flowered paper for the binding, deciding the exact size (4 inches by 2¾)
for the biography of Mr. Trip; or watching the young apprentices (these
paper covers were painted by children) each filling a row of diamond
spaces with his appointed colour.
His next venture was _The Lilliputian Magazine_[46] announced as “an
attempt to amend the World, to render the Society of Man more amiable,
and to re-establish the Simplicity, Virtue and Wisdom of the Golden Age”.
Details of the proposed method are set forth in the following “Dialogue”
between a gentleman and the Author:
_Gentleman_: I have seen, Sir, an Advertisement in the Papers of the
Lilliputian Magazine to be published at Three Pence a
Month: pray, what is the Design of it?
_Author_: Why, Sir, it is intended for the Use of Children, as you
may perceive by the Advertisement, and my Design is, by
Way of _History_ and _Fable_, to sow in their Minds the
Seeds of Polite Literature and to teach them the great
Grammer (_sic_) of the Universe: I mean the Knowledge
of Men and Things.
The framework of the book suggests a combination (in miniature) of
the Royal Society and the Spectator Club; for the various Pieces are
submitted to a Society of young Gentlemen and Ladies (including a young
Prince and several of the young Nobility) presided over by little Master
Meanwell (who by reading a great many Books and observing everything his
Tutor said to him, acquired a great deal of Wisdom).
The “Histories” and “Fables” that follow are not mixed from Mr.
Locke’s prescription. They are amusing parodies of Mr. Newbery’s (or
his contributor’s) reading from the _Spectator_ and _Gulliver_ and
Richardson’s novels. Not even Gulliver escapes the moralising tendency,
and Lilliput (here translated to the “Island of Angelica”) is a new
Utopia, where no man is allowed more money than he needs. The inhabitants
are so little removed from common experience that they appear to be “no
more than a gigantic Sort of Lilliputian, about the size of the Fairies
in Mr. Garrick’s Queen Mab”.[47]
Locke would have scorned the fanciful descriptions of this _Voyage
Imaginaire_; nor would “A History of the Rise and Progress of Learning in
Lilliput” (which precedes it) have pleased him better; he never could
have understood the sly humour of its author.
Indeed, but for the date, there might be some truth in the suggestion
that Goldsmith edited _The Lilliputian Magazine_. For among its
contributions was that notable “History of Mr. Thomas Trip” in which his
philanthropic bookseller was engaged; and in the “History”, a rhyme of
“Three Children Sliding on the Ice”[48] that Goldsmith might well have
invented to temper the virtues of Mr. Trip; for indeed, this hero, though
he scarcely overtops Tom Thumb, is the Wyse Chylde in little: “whenever
you see him, you will always find a book in his hand”.
But Goldsmith was not yet in London when _The Lilliputian Magazine_
appeared; the rhyme of “Three Children” is now said to be John Gay’s;
and it was Goldsmith himself who named John Newbery as Tommy Trip’s
biographer.
The other contributions are mere attempts to fit children of middle
age with little novels of morality and sentiment,—surely not the least
flattering imitations of Richardson.[49]
First comes the “History of Florella, sent by an unknown Hand (and may,
for aught we know, have been published before)”, and after an interval
for further reference and collation, “The History of Miss Sally Silence,
communicated by Lady Betty Lively”. But neither the story nor the
sentiment rings true. As yet, the Lilliputian novel has no life: and all
that there is to be said of Miss Sally is condensed in her epitaph:
“Here lie the Remains of the Duchess of Downright:
Who, when a Maid, was no other
than Sarah Jones
A poor Farmer’s Daughter.
From her Attachment to Goodness she
became great.
Her Virtue raised her from a mean State
To a high Degree of Honour
and
Her Innocence procured her Peace in her last Moments.
She smiled even in Agony
And embraced Death as a friendly Pilot
Who was to steer her
To a more exalted State of Bliss.”
Here the author, as if doubting his effect, adds a direct appeal:
“Little Reader,
Whoever thou art, observe these her Rules
And become thyself
A Copy of this bright Example.”
It was somewhere between 1760 and 1765, when a latent spirit of romance
was beginning to move the grown-up world, that the children’s bookseller
turned his attention to Nursery Rhymes.
Some of these were already in print. _Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book_[50]
had appeared in 1744: two tiny volumes in Dutch flowered boards, of which
the second only has survived. This was a great advance on the song-books
commonly given to children as soon as they could read; but there is
something more than the usual nonsense and rhythm in the Newbery rhymes.
The very title: _Mother Goose’s Melody_,[51] brings them into touch with
the first book of fairy-tales; and indeed those two voices (the child’s
and the man’s) can be heard here as in Perrault—a merry new partnership
of song and laughter—, the one piping high in lively see-saw, the other
declaiming a mock-learned “Preface”, fitting each rhyme with an ironic
“Note” or “Maxim”, burlesquing the commentators and setting the wit of
nursery sages against the wisdom of the pedants.
The editor of _Mother Goose’s Melody_, although the Preface declares him
“_a very great Writer_ of very little Books”, has none of that contempt
for “Nonsense” which philosophers are apt to show. He traces “the Custom
of making Nonsense Verses in our Schools” to “the Old British Nurses,
the first Preceptors of Youth”, and speaks of them with evident respect.
Yet he shows no bias towards the more imaginative absurdities. It is the
use of a rhyme for ironic comment, or its lyric quality that directs his
choice.
The song about Betty Winckle’s Pig that lived in clover (“but now he’s
dead and that’s all over”) is annotated thus: “A Dirge is a Song for
the Dead; but whether this was made for Betty Winckle or her Pig is
uncertain—no Notice being taken of it by Cambden or any of the famous
Antiquarians”.
This is “Amphion’s Song of Eurydice”:
“I won’t be my Father’s Jack
I won’t be my Mother’s Jill
I will be the Fiddler’s Wife
And have Musick when I will.
T’other little Tune
T’other little Tune
Prithee, Love, play me.
T’other little Tune.”
And this the comment (in small type, for Parents): “Those Arts are the
most valuable which are of the greatest Use”.
Such gentle irony would be lost upon the serious student of Lilliputian
Ethics. Grown-up wiseacres and little philosophers must have puzzled
their heads in vain over some of these “Maxims” and exclaimed at the
effrontery of a Writer, however “great”, who, after suggesting that an
unmeaning rhyme “might serve as a Chapter of Consequence in the New Book
of Logick”, could add (in a note upon “Margery Daw”): “It is a mean and
scandalous Practice among Authors to put Notes to Things that deserve no
Notice. (Grotius)”.
There is no direct evidence of Goldsmith’s hand in this; but he was
well acquainted with nonsense-songs, and Miss Hawkins, writing of her
childhood in a letter, connects him with a nursery-rhyme: “I little
thought”, she says, “what I should have to boast when Goldsmith taught me
to play Jack and Gill by two bits of paper on his fingers.”
If this “very great Writer of very little Books” was not Goldsmith, it is
an extraordinary coincidence that the rhyme in the Preface should be the
same that he sang to his friends on the first night of _The Good Natur’d
Man_, and “never consented to sing but on special Occasions”—which runs
thus:
“There was an old Woman tossed in a Blanket,
Seventeen times as high as the moon,
But where she was going no mortal could tell.
For under her arm she carried a Broom,
Old Woman, old Woman, old Woman, said I,
Whither, ah whither, ah whither so high?
To sweep the Cobwebs from the Sky,
And I’ll be with you by and by.”
There is only one Lilliputian book that has been attributed to
Goldsmith with the consent of his biographer, and that is Mr. Newbery’s
masterpiece, the quaint and original _History of Goody Two-Shoes_.[52]
Here is the characteristic notice that appeared in _The London Chronicle_
(December 19-January 1, 1765):
“The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the Learned in every
Faculty are desired to observe that on the 1st of January, being New
Year’s Day (Oh, that we may all lead new lives!), Mr. Newbery intends
to publish the following important Volumes, bound and gilt, and hereby
invites all his little Friends who are good to call for them at the Bible
and Sun, in St. Paul’s Churchyard: but those who are naughty are to have
none”.
Here follows a list of the “important Volumes”: “The Renowned History
of Giles Gingerbread: a little Boy who lived upon Learning;” Easter,
Whitsuntide and Valentine “Gifts”; “The Fairing”; and after these
an announcement of greater interest, that “there is in the Press and
speedily will be published, either by Subscription or otherwise, as the
Public shall please to determine, The History of Little Goody Two-shoes,
otherwise called Margery Two-Shoes”.
The “Gifts” are so many variants of the Lilliputian Miscellany,[53] and
as to _Giles Gingerbread_, there is nothing about him to attract a child,
unless his name should conjure up a flavour of those gingerbread books
sold at Fairs, which could be eaten when the reading grew tedious. The
story (made to fit a penny chap-book) tells, without digression, how
young Gingerbread learnt to read, that he might have a fine coach and
emulate the success of one Sir Toby Wilson, who also was a poor man’s son.
But _Goody Two-shoes_, though it offers a similar prize for self-help,
teaches no such politic morality. Indeed, it shows what can be done with
the babies’ novel, by a writer who understands children and has a winning
gift of humour; but for all that, it presents in epitome the whole
Lilliputian Library.
The title-page at once proclaims its likeness to those records of
triumphant virtue, the nursery “Richardsons”; the “Introduction” is
a miniature essay on land-reform. Mr. Welsh, who reprinted _Goody
Two-Shoes_ in 1882, found an exact picture of the Deserted Village in the
Parish of Mouldwell, where little Margery’s father suffers the “wicked
Persecutions” of Sir Timothy Gripe and “an overgrown Farmer called
Graspall”.
A passage at the close of the “Introduction” certainly lends some colour
to the idea that it was a half-playful study of Goldsmith’s, for his
serious argument:
“But what, says the Reader, can occasion all this? Do you intend this
for children, Mr. Newbery? Why, do you suppose this is written by Mr.
Newbery, Sir? This may come from another Hand. This is not the Book, Sir,
mentioned in the Title, but the Introduction to that Book; and it is
intended, Sir, not for those Sort of Children, but for Children of six
Feet high, of which ... there are many Millions in the Kingdom”.
The change, after all, is merely from Lilliput to Brobdignag,—a voyage
that represents no more difficulty to the editor than to Gulliver himself.
It is in Lilliputian pedagogy that the writer of _Goody Two-Shoes_ has so
completely outdistanced his fellows.
For although none of them could produce a more whole-hearted supporter of
Locke’s theories than “little Two-Shoes”, she wastes no time in abstract
reasoning, but puts them at once into practice.
No sooner did she learn to read (and that was startlingly soon) than she
began to teach her companions, and finding them by no means so quick nor
so diligent as herself, she cut out of several pieces of wood ten “Setts”
of large letters and ten of small (all printed very clear in the text);
“and every Morning she used to go round to teach the Children with these
Rattletraps in a Basket—_as you see in the Print_”.
The letter-games of Goody Two-Shoes were doubtless among the “twenty
other Ways” hinted at by Mr. Locke when he described his own, in which
“Children may be cozen’d into a Knowledge of the Letters”. There are
minute directions for playing them in the chapter that tells “How little
Two-Shoes became a _trotting Tutoress_”.
Nor is virtue (the philosopher’s chief concern) neglected for this matter
of mere learning. There are lessons and reflections enough for the old
“Schools of Virtue”; but little Margery’s true piety makes amends for her
preaching and saves her from the prudential excess of the “little Boy who
lived upon Learning”. When she admonished the sick gentleman for his
late hours by the example of the rooks, she forced him to laugh and admit
that she was “a sensible Hussey”. The Reader (more often admonished) does
the same.
In this blending of morality and humour, the author is only following
the practice of eighteenth century novelists. His morality (in the main,
very sound and reasonable) hangs by the humour of separate incidents; yet
these, together, form a sequence of moral and “cautionary” tales. There
is, for example, the warning against useless display in the account of
Lady Ducklington’s funeral,—“the Money they squandered away would have
been better laid out in little Books for Children, or in Meat, Drink and
Cloaths for the Poor”;—against superstition,—the story of the ghost in
the church, or the dramatic Witch story of the Second Part; and there are
parallel examples of kindness and good sense.
A small child would make his first reading by the woodcuts (which are
much like a child’s drawings): here, first, are little Margery and her
brother, left, like the Children in the Wood “to the Wide World”; here
is Tommy Two-Shoes (at an incredibly tender age) dressed like a little
sailor—“_Pray look at him_”,—and there again, wiping off Margery’s tears
with the end of his jacket—“_thus_”—and bidding her cry no more, for that
he will come to her again when he returns from sea. He is much blurred in
this picture—perhaps with tears.
At this point the story goes back to the frontispiece: by far the best
picture of Margery, in a setting of trees and fields, with a little house
on one side of her and a church in the distance. She is wearing her _two
shoes_ for the first time (for until a charitable good man gave her a
pair, she had but one): “stroking down her ragged Apron _thus_”, and
crying out: “_Two Shoes, Mame, see two Shoes_”.
Next comes that serious business of Letters and Syllables. But Somebody
(with a Basket of Rattle-traps) is at the door.
“Tap, tap, tap, who’s there?” (It might have been Red Riding-Hood! “_Toc,
toc! Qui est là?_”) But it is only little Goody Two-Shoes, greeting her
new scholar in the same childish voice.
Thus the little one gets through the lessons and proverbs of the next
few pages, and at Chapter VI, which tells “How the whole Parish was
frighted”, knows the triumph and delight of reading.
“Babies do not want to hear about babies”, said Dr. Johnson; but he was
never, like Goldsmith, intimate with the Nursery in all its moods, and it
did not occur to him that his favourite Tom Thumb was but a child seen
through the diminishing-glass of a woodcut.
This, moreover, is a story that _grows up_ in the reading. At Chapter VI,
there is no more baby-talk. These are mature, even elderly villagers who
are so “frighted” at the idea of a ghost in the church: the argument is
between the Parson, the Clerk and the Clerk’s Wife:
“I go. Sir, says William, why the Ghost would frighten me out of my
Wits.—Mrs. Dobbins too cried, and laying hold of her Husband said, he
should not be eat up by the Ghost. A Ghost, you Blockheads, says Mr.
Long in a Pet, did either of you ever see a Ghost, or know any Body that
did? Yes, says the Clerk, my Father did once in the Shape of a Windmill,
and it walked all round the Church in a white Sheet, with Jack Boots
on, and had a Gun by its Side instead of a Sword. A fine Picture of a
Ghost truly, says Mr. Long, give me the Key of the Church, you Monkey;
for I tell you there is no such Thing now, whatever may have been
formerly.—Then taking the Key, he went to the Church, all the People
following him. As soon as he had opened the Door, what Sort of a Ghost do
you think appeared? Why little _Two-shoes_, who being weary, had fallen
asleep in one of the Pews during the Funeral Service, and was shut in
all Night——”.
Such incidents would make even a grown-up reader forget the Lilliputian
context.
Nor is the Second Part (as in other “Histories”) of less interest,
although it presents the dutiful contriving little Two-shoes as
“Principal of a Country College—for instructing little Gentlemen and
Ladies in the Science of A.B.C.”. A formidable theme, if her inventive
genius could not produce any number of variations upon Mr. Locke’s method
of playing at schools.
A reference to the _Spectator_ at the close of Part I would make Mistress
Two-Shoes a predecessor of Shenstone’s Schoolmistress; but this is
clearly an anachronism. The village Dame as Shenstone studies her, still
sits
“disguised in look profound
And eyes her fairy-Throng, and turns her Wheel around”;
whereas Goody Two-Shoes, knowing that “Nature intended Children should be
always in Action”, places her letters and alphabets all round the school,
so that everyone in turn is obliged to get up to fetch a letter or to
spell a word.
Her children have forgotten the hornbook, and with it, doubtless, “St.
George’s high Achievements” which used to decorate the back. It was
Shenstone’s Dame who kept “tway birchen Sprays” to reclaim her pupils’
wandering attention from St. George. But Mrs. Margery ruled “by Reasoning
and mild Discipline”, and could dispense with these.
“Her Tenderness extended not only to all Mankind, but even to all
Animals that were not noxious”. Such humanity alone (notwithstanding the
reservation) sets her above the poet’s heroine, to whose credit he could
only place
“One ancient Hen she took Delight to feed
The plodding Pattern of this busy Dame,
Which ever and anon as she had need
Into her School begirt with Chickens came.”
Indeed, Mrs. Margery surpasses Æsop and Tommy Trip in her manner of
pressing Beasts and Birds into the service of Education.
Locke, whose imagination had stopped short at pictures of animals,
would have detected the insidious workings of romance in a school where
the ushers were birds, where a dog acted as door-keeper and a pet lamb
carried home the books of the good children in turn.
Yet in another place, the youthful Dame shows herself a mistress of
utilitarian argument:
“Does not the Horse and the Ass carry you and your burthens? Don’t the Ox
plough your Ground, the Cow give you Milk, the Sheep cloath your Back,
the Dog watch your House, the Goose find you in Quills to write with, the
Hen bring Eggs for your Custards and Puddings, and the Cock call you up
in the Morning——? If so, how can you be so cruel to them, and abuse God
Almighty’s good Creatures?”
Thus the creatures are protected chiefly for their services; Nature,
as yet, is no more than a useful and necessary background. It is still
Humanity that counts.
As to Romance, the writer’s attitude must be judged by default. There is
but one reference to Fortunatus and Friar Bacon to indicate a preference
for works of Reason and Ingenuity.
This follows one of those quaint interludes that prove the quick wit and
hide the laughter of Mistress Two-Shoes. In her character of village
peacemaker, she contrives a “Considering Cap”, “almost as large as a
Grenadier’s, but of three equal Sides; on the first of which was written,
I may be wrong; on the second, It is fifty to one but you are; and on
the third, I’ll consider of it. The other Parts on the out-side, were
filled with odd Characters, as unintelligible as the Writings of the
old Egyptians; but within Side there was a Direction for its Use, of
the utmost Consequence; for it strictly enjoined the Possessor to put
on the Cap whenever he found his Passions begin to grow turbulent, and
not to deliver a Word whilst it was on, but with great Coolness and
Moderation.... They were bought by Husbands and Wives, who had themselves
frequent Occasion for them, and sometimes lent them to their Children.
They were also purchased in large Quantities by Masters and Servants; by
young Folks who were intent on Matrimony, by Judges, Jurymen, and even
Physicians and Divines: nay, if we may believe History, the Legislators
of the Land did not disdain the Use of them; and we are told, that when
any important Debate arose, _Cap was the Word_, and each House looked
like a grand Synod of Egyptian Priests.”
After this, lest the old spells should work upon some unguarded child,
Friar Bacon is called in, to advertise this “Charm for the Passions” in a
letter of advice:
“What was Fortunatus’ Wishing Cap when compared to this?... Remember what
was said by my Brazen Head, _Time is, Time was, Time is past_: now the
_Time is_, therefore buy the Cap immediately, and make a proper Use of
it, and be happy before the _Time is past_”.
The Learned Friar has burnt his books, and there is an end of Magic. Mrs.
Margery has no dealings in a “Gothick Mythology of Elves and Fairies”;
her Familiars are the tame creatures of her household, she does her
conjuring by the legitimate powers of Science. And when, through her
cleverness in contriving a weather-glass to save her neighbours’ hay, she
is accused of witchcraft by the people of other parishes, her advocate,
like a true Lilliputian, defends her with the arguments of Addison and
Goldsmith.[54]
This witch-story is the climax (if such a haphazard little plot can have
a climax) and it gives a masterly last touch to the heroine’s portrait.
She is standing with all her pets about her, when Gaffer Goosecap (full
of the weather-glass mystery) comes to spy upon her:
“This so surprised the Man that he cried out a Witch! a Witch! upon this
she laughing, answered, a Conjurer! a Conjurer! and so they parted; but
it did not end thus, for a Warrant was issued out against Mrs. Margery,
and she was carried to a Meeting of the Justices, whither all the
Neighbours followed her”.
At the trial her triumph is complete. Even her judges join in the
laughter when she produces the weather-glass and cries: “If I am a Witch,
this is my Charm”.
The writer, whoever he was, had little to learn from Rousseau. Miss
Edgeworth herself could not have invented a more reasonable and
intelligent heroine.
It is easy to see why Charles Lamb put _Goody Two-Shoes_ among “the old
classics of the Nursery”[55], and no matter for wonder that it should be
set down to Goldsmith.
For apart from that hint of _The Deserted Village_ in the “Introduction”,
it has living characters, natural speech and incidents of genuine comedy.
The playful tenderness of the first chapters suggests Goldsmith’s
treatment of children, and the whole theme is near enough to his idea of
a story “like the old one of Whittington _were his Cat left out_”[56].
For if he ever had written such a story and managed to keep the cat out
of it, he would certainly have repented and introduced some other animal
in its place, or with native inconsistency, might have multiplied it into
a menagerie such as Goody Two-Shoes kept. The idea of talking animals
had once attracted him, and if he could write a good Fable, why not a
“History”?
Forster records Godwin’s “strong persuasion” that Goldsmith wrote _Goody
Two-Shoes_, and Godwin, himself a publisher of children’s books, may
have had good reason for his belief; yet there is no certain evidence to
confirm it, nor will the book, as a whole, bear all the claims of its
admirers.
Nichols, in his _Literary Anecdotes_,[57] associates this and other
“Lilliputian Histories” with the brothers Griffiths and Giles Jones, and
family tradition credits Giles with _Goody Two-Shoes_ as well as _Giles
Gingerbread_ and _Tommy Trip_; but if, as Goldsmith would have it, Mr.
Newbery was the real author of _Tommy Trip_, there is no reason why he
should not have had a hand in the rest. _Goody Two-Shoes_, in fact,
has several turns of speech and grammatical slips which occur in John
Newbery’s journal;[58] nor is it at all unlikely that Goldsmith, the
friend of Giles Jones and Newbery, contributed such lively matter as the
ghost and witch stories, or so quaint a fancy as the “Considering Cap”.
John Newbery’s successors[59] carried on the tradition, but at his death
the great period of “Lilliputian Histories” was past. Their numbers were
always increasing, but they were mostly imitations and moralised echoes
of folklore like _Tom Thumb’s Exhibition_ or _The Enchanted Castle_.
Yet there are a few late “Lilliputians” that have the true Newbery touch,
and even a fresh spice of satire. _The Lilliputian Masquerade_,[60]
though it goes back to _Gulliver_, belongs to the age of the Pantheon
and Almack’s, and its gay “Masks” (all “Lilliputians of Repute”) include
two romantic surprises. For in the company of Sir William Wise and Sir
Francis Featherbrain of Butterfly Hall, there is the unexpected figure of
a Beggar “singing merrily”, and one undoubted harbinger of the New Age—a
little hero of Blake and of Charles Lamb,—the Chimney Sweeper, new as yet
to the mystery of his “cloth”.
In the meantime, a whole section of the dwarf library was devoted
to the Wyse Chylde in a variety of rôles. Following that “Rise and
Progress of Learning in Lilliput”, there came a formidable crowd of
little Philosophers, little Statesmen, little Judges, little Divines
and (to keep an accurate record of their careers) little Historians and
Biographers.
“Self-Government” in the Schoolroom (by no means, as some may suppose,
a present-day innovation) made its first appearance in _Juvenile
Trials_,[61] the acknowledged device of a Tutor and Governess who
prescribe it as a “Regimen” for their “unruly Pupils”, and thus,
profiting by the wisdom of Cato, induce the authors of great evils to
remove them.
This is the first hint of a Lilliputian Republic: the logical outcome of
Locke’s principles in a revolutionary age. The Lilliputians give their
best support to the new Government and throw themselves with zest into
their parts.
Little Judge Meanwell who, though but twelve years old, has “all the
Appearance of Gravity and Magistracy”, in a long robe and full-bottomed
wig, anticipates parental criticism by reminding the public that “neither
Vanity, nor Ambition, nor the Desire of governing Others at an Age in
which he stands so much in Need of being governed himself, has raised him
to this Office, which he cannot execute but with Regret”.
He adds (doubtless after consultation with his Leaders) that the Trials,
as the result of their “wisest Deliberation”, are by no means to be
treated as “the Sport of Boys and Girls”.
The Tutor and Governess take full advantage of the scheme, and after the
royal ceremony of inauguration, leave the unruly ones to the judgment
of their peers. Perhaps it is this unwonted freedom which lets loose a
stream of live and humorous dialogue; for no sooner do the “Trials” begin
than these Lilliputians betray the natural propensities and dramatic
instincts of real children.
Mr. Newbery himself could hardly have drawn better pictures of country
life, or spoken better dialect than the Farmer in one of these “trials”.
In another (which suggests the ordeal of the Knave of Hearts) the
evidence is not unworthy of Defoe,—the Prosecution putting in a plan of
the kitchen where the stolen plum-cake was baked; and a third,—the case
of Miss Stirling _versus_ Miss Delia, “for raising Strife and Contention
among her Schoolfellows”—is wholly “conveyed” from Sarah Fielding’s
_Governess_,[62] a source that may explain many unexpected features in
the book.
But the old standards of Authority are restored in _The Juvenile
Biographer_,[63] a collection of “characters” in moral contrast, with a
“Bust of the little Author” as frontispiece. Some account of him at the
end, had it been prefatory, would have prepared the reader for much of
his philosophy. Throughout the book he speaks plain Prig,—a development
that might be foreseen in one who “when he came to be breeched, laid
aside all juvenile Sports”. His playfellows think him “a dull heavy
little Fellow”, he is “a very poor Hand at Marbles, Trap Ball or
Cricket, and little attentive to Play”; when other boys are engaged in
strife, he retires into a corner with some little Book.
No doubt he is a very proper person to record those juvenile virtues
and foibles that might escape a natural child,—to discern the “Thought,
Prudence and admirable Needlecraft” of Miss Betsey Allgood, to speculate
upon the literary ancestry of Master Francis Bacon, or to deprecate the
failings of that “genteel Child,” Miss Fiddle-Faddle, who “at seven Years
of Age, could spend a whole Forenoon at her Glass, and devote an Hour to
pitching upon the proper Part of her Face to stick that Patch on”. This
“little Author” is, in fact, a reincarnation of the Baby Spectator.
There is a year or two between these “Lives” and the first book of
Lilliputian “Letters”. No children’s novel followed Richardson so closely
as to adopt the letter form; but Locke had expressly advised that
children should write letters “wherein they should not be put upon any
Strains of Wit or Compliment, but taught to express their own plain easy
Sense”, and had further recommended that when they were perfect in this,
they might, “to raise their Thoughts”, have Voiture’s letters set before
them as models.[64]
The Lilliputian editor, loth to await the child’s readiness for Voiture,
adapted Locke in his own fashion, and devised new models for the Nursery,
which should admit the usual “Characters” and “Reflections” of the
miscellanies, and at the same time give a suggestion of reality to formal
dialogues.
However full these letters might be of grown-up sentiment, their very
directions and signatures gave proof (convincing to a child) of the
editor’s good faith.
_The Letters between Master Tommy and Miss Nancy Goodwill_, published
by Carnan and Newbery in 1770, was revised in 1786 with “the Parts not
altogether properly adapted to the Improvement and Entertainment of
little Masters and Misses expunged”.[65] What remains, however, shows no
change in style or substance; the Lilliputian features are intact. As
the editor observed: “The epistolatory Style here adopted is that which
little Masters and Misses should use in their Correspondence with each
other” (not that which they naturally would fall into) and it is designed
“to regulate their Judgments, to give them an early Taste for true
Politeness and inspire them with a Love of Virtue”.
The “Holiday Amusements” described in the letters seem to be “regulated”
on the same plan (the editor had obviously forgotten his own); and it is
something of a relief to find Master Tommy (whose relationship to the
Juvenile Biographer is close) warning his sister and her schoolfellows
against the cult of nursery bluestockings.[66] He hopes they are “not
going to turn Philosophers”; if they are, he will put them in mind of
their needles, their pins and their thread papers. “Leave these Subjects”
advises this lordly midget, “to us Boys (I was going to say Men) and we
may perhaps now and then condescend to give you some short Lectures upon
those Matters”.
Miss Nancy, schooled in the sisterly virtues, responds with Persian
stories, references to Mr. Addison, quotations from Pope, and (to clear
herself of any suspicion of the bluestocking heresy) a present of worked
ruffles. Upon this, he, with restored confidence, imparts an allegorical
dream, an instructive story and a “Dissertation on the Value of Time”
which closes on this characteristic note:
“But of all the Diversions of Life, there is none so proper to fill up
its empty Spaces as the reading useful and entertaining Authors. For this
Reason, my dear Nancy, you will receive by the next Coach, Mr. Newbery’s
_Circle of the Sciences_, and such other of his Books as I apprehend
could anyway contribute to your Instruction and Amusement.”
There is one letter, and one only, in which Master Tommy forgets his
Philosophy and lets the Child in him escape:
“O, my dear Nancy, how shall I tell you that my sweet Kite which boasted
of the two finest glass Eyes perhaps ever seen, which was so crowded with
Stars and which cost me such immense Labour, is lost.”
The revised edition was doubtless an attempt to keep pace with the
rival firm of John Marshall; for between the two issues (about 1777)
they had printed a new collection under the title of _Juvenile
Correspondence_,[67] which in some ways was better adapted to Locke’s
original plan, as well as to the theories of Rousseau.
The very fact that these letters are “suited to Children from four to
above ten Years of Age”, and that their aim is to encourage “a natural
Way of Writing”, implies a change in the general view of education;
yet it would be rash to assume that the writer had more than a passing
acquaintance with Rousseau, or that she (this writer is almost certainly
a woman) drew any clear distinction between childhood and youth. The
whole design of _Juvenile Correspondence_ is Lilliputian; its aim is
expressed almost in the exact phrase of the Royal Society, and its
origin (apart from the Goodwill “Letters”) can be traced to a remark of
Pope’s (quoted in the book) that he “should have Pleasure in reading the
Thoughts of an Infant, could it commit them to Writing as they arose in
its little Mind”.
Moreover the children who write the letters, instead of developing on
Rousseau’s lines, become more Lilliputian with each year of growth.[68]
All the natural touches are in the letters of the younger ones; from
five to seven, they would pass for living children. Indeed, the first
letter “from Miss Goodchild, a little more than seven Years of Age to her
Brother nearly five” suggests that the next generation of Lilliputians
will refuse to grow up so soon:
“Would you think it? I am sitting in a little Room full of Books, with a
Desk for Reading and my Papers round me, as if I were a Woman! _But I am
not so silly as to forget that I am but a little Girl_,
and, my dear Brother,
Your loving Sister, JANE GOODCHILD.”
This is the first sign of revolution. The puppets are still content to
play their parts, but they refuse to believe in them. Instead, they
begin to assert their own “Gothick Mythology”, and are no longer so
“subservient to the Rules of Reason” as to despise the name of Fairies.
Miss Goodchild “could talk all day of the Play” (Mr. Garrick’s “Fairy
Tale” from Shakespeare).[69] She actually quotes the song beginning:
“Come follow, follow me, ye fairy Elves that be” from an Entertainment
“full of Fairies”, and confesses that she and Jenny were ready to jump up
and join in the chorus, singing:
“Hand in Hand we’ll dance around
For this Place is Fairy Ground.”
But the book is full of contradictions; nothing in it bears out the
promise of those early letters. Master Gentle, at the age of seven,
is delivered into the hands of Mr. Birch who, as his name forebodes,
believes neither in Reasoning nor mild Discipline; and at ten, Mr.
Birch’s pupils become little monsters of virtue and precocity. They are
Lilliputians of a larger growth, but they certainly are not boys. This
book, moreover, lacks the Newbery touch of comedy. Its humour is mostly
unconscious, as in the account of a father who asks permission to read
his son’s letters, where the boy confides to a friend that he feels “like
the Swain in Shenstone: ‘_fearful, but not averse_’”.
Among the numberless books for children printed between 1780 and 1810,
there were three which, although they discarded the nursery badge
of “Flowery and Gilt”, and had little in common with the Newbery
miscellanies, followed Lilliputian precedent in form and title.
These were the _Juvenile Tatler_ (1783), the _Fairy Spectator_ (1789) and
the _Juvenile Spectator_ (1810).[70] The first two are among the earliest
books that show the influence of Marmontel and Madame de Beaumont; they
therefore are no true Lilliputians: the third mimics Addison’s method
with absolute fidelity, and sparkles with the satirical spirit of its
original; yet this too breaks loose from Lilliputian convention; it has
almost enough sanity and wit to be called a nursery Jane Austen.
These three will be seen to better advantage with others of their kind.
A strong revival of romance in children’s books would have driven out the
Lilliputians at the close of the eighteenth century; but the progress
of Theory prevented it, and produced, with a fresh crop of moral tales,
innumerable reprints.
Canning’s amusing paper in the _Eton Microcosm_ (June 11, 1787),[71] did
more than mark the vogue of those tiny “16 mo’s” at Mr. Newbery’s and
“the Bouncing B, Shoe Lane”: it was also a tempting advertisement; and in
the early nineteenth century small Londoners who could not rise to the
splendours of “twopence Gilt” might buy their own New Year and Easter
Gifts at Catnach’s or the “Toy and Marble Warehouse” in Seven Dials,
for a half-penny, or even (with covers of rough blue sugar-paper) for a
farthing.[72]
In 1779 Saint, the north-country Newbery, had printed a Newcastle edition
of _Tommy Trip_, and between 1790 and 1812, the entire Lilliputian
library was revived in the York chap-books by Wilson and Spence. Other
provincial booksellers, following these, began to improve their stocks
of school-books and battledores with pirated “Newberys”; and some, like
Rusher of Banbury, retouched old rhymes and tales with local colour. It
was Rusher who restored the tradition of _Giles Gingerbread_ with the
_History of a Banbury Cake_;[73] and in the childhood of Queen Victoria,
his little shop was still famous for toy-books.