In addition to the writers already mentioned, and represented by selections in the following pages, there were several others whose books are yet accessible and now and then read for their historical interest if not for any intrinsic literary value they may possess. One of these was Mrs. Sarah K. Trimmer (1741-1810), who, associated with the early days of the Sunday-school movement, wrote many books full of the overwrought piety which was supposed to be necessary for children of that earlier time. One of her books, The History of the Robins, stands out from the mass for its strong appeal of simple incident, and is still widely popular with very young readers. Hannah More (1745-1833) occupied a prominent place in the thought of her day as a teacher of religious and social ideas among the poorer classes. Her Repository Tracts, many of them in the form of stories, were devoted to making the poor contented with their lot through the consolations of a pious life. "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was the most famous of these story-tracts, and there are still many people living whose childhood was fed upon this and like stories. Mrs. Sherwood's History of the Fairchild Family has never been out of print since the date of its first publication (1818), and in recent years has had two or three sumptuous revivals at the hands of editors and publishers. The almost innumerable books of Jacob Abbott and S. G. Goodrich ("Peter Parley") in America belong to this didactic movement. They were, however, more devoted to the process of instilling a knowledge of all the wonders of this great world round about us, and were considerably less pietistic than their English neighbors. The Rollo Books (24 vols.) are typical of this school.
The modern period. Charles Lamb apparently was one of the first to get the modern thought that literature for children should be just as artistic, just as dignified in its presentation of truth, and just as worthy of literary recognition, as literature for adults. In the hundred years since Lamb advanced his theory, students have gradually come to recognize the fact that good literature for children is also good literature for adults because art is art, whatever its form. In this connection, Lamb's feeling about the necessity for making children's books more vital found expression in a famous and much-quoted passage in a letter to Coleridge:
"Goody Two-Shoes is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems must come to a child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noodle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the while he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!"
The danger Lamb saw was averted. The bibliography on a preceding page indicates that about the middle of the nineteenth century many writers of first-rate literary ability began to write for young people. Among the number were Harriet Martineau, Captain Marryat, Charlotte M. Yonge, Thomas Hughes, and others. As we pass toward the end of that century and the beginning of the twentieth, the great names associated with juvenile classics are very noticeable, and with Miss Alcott, Mrs. Ewing, "Mark Twain," Stevenson, Kipling, Masefield, and a kindred host, childhood has come into its own.
SUGGESTIONS FOR READING
For tracing the stages in the development of writing for children consult the books named in the General Bibliography ([p. 17], II, "Historical Development.")
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Among those authors of the past whom the present still regards affectionately, Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) holds a high place. At least five of his works—a novel, a poem, a play, a book of essays, a nursery story—rank as classics. He had many faults; he was vain, improvident almost beyond belief, certainly dissipated throughout a part of his life. But with all these faults he had the saving grace of humor, a kind heart that led him to share even his last penny with one in need, a genius for friendships that united him with such men as Burke and Johnson and Reynolds. Always "hard up," he wrote much as a publisher's "hack" in order merely to live. It was in this capacity that he probably wrote the famous story that follows—a story that stands at the beginning of the long and constantly broadening current of modern literature for children. While it has generally been attributed to Goldsmith, no positive evidence of his authorship has been discovered. It was published at a time when he was in the employ of John Newbery, the London publisher, who issued many books for children. We know that Goldsmith helped with the Mother Goose's Melody and other projects of Newbery, and there are many reasons for supposing that the general attribution of Goody Two-Shoes to him may be correct. Charles Welsh, who edited the best recent edition for schools, says it "will always deserve a place among the classics of childhood for its literary merit, the purity and loftiness of its tone, and its sound sense, while the whimsical, confidential, affectionate style which the author employs, makes it attractive even to children who have long since passed the spelling-book stage." The version that follows has been shortened by the omission of passages that have less importance for the modern child than they may have had for that of the eighteenth century. The story is thus rendered more compact, and contains nothing to draw attention away from the fine qualities mentioned above. The quaint phrasing of the title, in itself one of the proofs of Goldsmith's authorship, furnishes a good comment on the meaning of the story: "The history of little Goody Two-Shoes/otherwise called Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes/the means by which she acquired her learning and wisdom, and in consequence thereof her estate; set forth at large for the benefit of those/
Who from a state of Rags and Care,
And having Shoes but half a Pair;
Their Fortune and their fame would fix,
And gallop in a Coach and Six."