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.