requisite for
genteel conduct: "Throw not anything under the Table. Pick not thy teeth
at the Table, unless holding thy Napkin before thy mouth with thine
other Hand." With such an array of intellectual and moral contents, the
little "Pocket-Book" may appear to-day to be almost anything except an
amusement book. Yet this was the phase that the English play-book first
assumed, and it must not be forgotten that English prose fiction was
only then coming into existence, except such germs as are found in the
character sketches in the "Spectator" and in the cleverly told incidents
by Defoe.

In 1744, when Newbery published this duodecimo, Dr. Samuel Johnson was
the presiding genius of English letters; four years earlier, fiction had
come prominently into the foreground with the publication of "Pamela" by
Samuel Richardson; and between seventeen hundred and forty and seventeen
hundred and fifty-two, Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," Smollett's
"Roderick Random" and "Peregrine Pickle," and Fielding's "Tom Jones" were
published. This fact may seem irrelevant to the present subject;
nevertheless, the idea of a veritable story-book, that is a book relating
a tale, does not seem to have entered Newbery's mind until after these
novels had met with a deserved and popular success.

The result of Newbery's first efforts to follow Locke's advice was so
satisfactory that his wares were sought most eagerly. "Very soon," said
his son, Francis Newbery, "he was in the full employment of his talents
in writing and publishing books of amusement and instruction for
Children. The call for them was immense, an edition of many thousands
being sometimes exhausted during the Christmas holidays. His friend, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, who, like other grave characters, could now and then be
jocose, had used to say of him, 'Newbery is an extraordinary man, for I
know not whether he has read or written most Books.'"[51-A]

The bookseller was no less clever in his use of other people's wits. No
one knows how many of the tiny gilt bindings covered stories told by
impecunious writers, to whom the proceeds in times of starvation were
bread if not butter. Newbery, though called by Goldsmith "the
philanthropic publisher of St. Paul's Churchyard," knew very well the
worth to his own pocket of these authors' skill in story-writing. Between
the years seventeen hundred and fifty-seven and seventeen hundred and
sixty-seven, the English publisher was at the height of his