e pages and added interest to the contents.

To the modern child, these books give no pleasure; but to those who love
the history of children of the past, they are interesting for two
reasons. In them is portrayed something of the life of eighteenth
century children; and by them the century's difference in point of view
as to the constituents of a story-book can be gauged. Moreover, all
Newbery's publications are to be credited with a careful preparation
that later stories sadly lacked. They were always written with a certain
art; if the language was pompous, we remember Dr. Johnson; if the style
was formal, its composition was correct; if the tales lacked ease in
telling, it was only the starched etiquette of the day reduced to a
printed page; and if they preached, they at least were seldom vulgar.

The preaching, moreover, was of different character from that of former
times. Hitherto, the fear of the Lord had wholly occupied the author's
attention when he composed a book "proper for a child as soon as he can
read;" now, material welfare was dwelt upon, and a good boy's reward
came to him when he was chosen the Lord Mayor of London. Good girls were
not forgotten, and were assured that, like Goody Two-Shoes, they should
attain a state of prosperity wherein

"Their Fortune and their Fame would fix
And gallop in their Coach and Six."

Goody Two-Shoes, with her particular method of instilling the alphabet,
and such books as "King Pippin" (a prodigy of learning) may be
considered as tiny commentaries upon the years when Johnson reigned
supreme in the realm of learning. These and many others emphasized not
the effects of piety,--Cotton Mather's forte,--but the benefits of
learning; and hence the good boy was also one who at the age of five
spelt "apple-pye" correctly and therefore eventually became a great man.

At the time of Newbery's death it was more than evident that his
experiment had succeeded, and children's stories were a printed fact.

FOOTNOTES:

[45-A] Field, _The Child and his Book_, p. 223.

[51-A] Welsh, _Bookseller of the Last Century_, pp. 22, 23.

[52-A] Foster, _Life of Goldsmith_, vol. i, p. 244.

[54-A] Welsh, _Bookseller of the Last Century_, p. 109.

CHAPTER III

1750-1776

Kings should be good
Not men of blood.
_The New England Primer_, 1791

If Faith itself has different dresses worn
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn.