ominant, "Be good and you will go
to Heaven." Virtue as an ethical quality had been shown in "Goody
Two-Shoes" to bring its reward as surely as vice brought punishment. It
is to be doubted if this was altogether wholesome; and it may well be
that it was with this idea in mind that Dr. Johnson made his celebrated
criticism of the nursery literature in vogue, when he said to Mrs.
Piozzi, "Babies do not want to be told about babies; they like to be
told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can stretch and
stimulate their little minds."[141-A]

The learned Doctor, having himself been brought up on "Jack the Giant
Killer" and "The History of Blue Beard," was inclined to scorn Newbery's
tales as lacking in imaginative quality. That Dr. Johnson was really
interested in stories for the young people of his time is attested by a
note written in seventeen hundred and sixty-three on the fly-leaf of a
collection of chap-books: "I shall certainly, sometime or other, write a
little Story-Book in the style of these. I shall be happy to succeed,
for he who pleases children will be remembered by them."[141-B]

In America, however, it is doubtful whether any true critical spirit
regarding children's books had been reached. Fortunately in England, at
the beginning of the next century, there was a man who dared speak his
opinion. Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Trimmer (who had contributed "Fabulous
Histories" to the juvenile library, and for them had shared the approval
which greeted Mrs. Barbauld's efforts) were the objects of Charles
Lamb's particular detestation. In a letter to Coleridge, written in
1802, he said:

"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. Barbauld'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 noddle must be turned with conceit of his own
powers when he has learned 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 time he suspected
himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no
less in the little walks of children than of men. Is there no
pos