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: