ent, wrote many books full of the
overwrought piety which was supposed to be necessary for children of
that earlier time. One of her books, _The History of the Robins_, stands
out from the mass for its strong appeal of simple incident, and is still
widely popular with very young readers. Hannah More (1745-1833) occupied
a prominent place in the thought of her day as a teacher of religious
and social ideas among the poorer classes. Her _Repository Tracts_, many
of them in the form of stories, were devoted to making the poor
contented with their lot through the consolations of a pious life. "The
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was the most famous of these story-tracts,
and there are still many people living whose childhood was fed upon this
and like stories. Mrs. Sherwood's _History of the Fairchild Family_ has
never been out of print since the date of its first publication (1818),
and in recent years has had two or three sumptuous revivals at the hands
of editors and publishers. The almost innumerable books of Jacob Abbott
and S. G. Goodrich ("Peter Parley") in America belong to this didactic
movement. They were, however, more devoted to the process of instilling
a knowledge of all the wonders of this great world round about us, and
were considerably less pietistic than their English neighbors. _The
Rollo Books_ (24 vols.) are typical of this school.

_The modern period._ Charles Lamb apparently was one of the first to get
the modern thought that literature for children should be just as
artistic, just as dignified in its presentation of truth, and just as
worthy of literary recognition, as literature for adults. In the hundred
years since Lamb advanced his theory, students have gradually come to
recognize the fact that good literature for children is also good
literature for adults because art is art, whatever its form. In this
connection, Lamb's feeling about the necessity for making children's
books more vital found expression in a famous and much-quoted passage in
a letter to Coleridge:

"_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. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense
lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and
vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems