The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes | Page 2

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 learnt 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 with men. Is there no
possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been
now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in
childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!
"Hang them!--I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and
blasts of all that is human in man and child."[B]

There must, however, be many parents still living who remember the
delight that the little story gave them in their younger days, and they
will, no doubt, be pleased to see it once more in the form which was
then so familiar to them. The children of to-day, too, will look on it
with some curiosity, on account of the fact that it is one of the oldest of
our nursery tales, and amused and edified their grand-parents and great
grand-parents when they were children, while they cannot fail to be
attracted by its simple, pretty, and interesting story.
* * * * *
The question of the authorship of the book is still an unsettled one. It
was at one time commonly attributed to Oliver Goldsmith, and no one
who reads the book will consider it to be unworthy of the poet's pen.
We find, however, in Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, that
"It is not perhaps generally known that to Mr Griffith Jones, and a
brother of his, Mr Giles Jones, in conjunction with Mr John Newbery,
the public are indebted for the origin of those numerous and popular
little books for the amusement and instruction of children which have
been ever since received with universal approbation. The Lilliputian
histories of Goody Two Shoes, Giles Gingerbread, Tommy Trip, &c.,
&c., are remarkable proofs of the benevolent minds of the projectors of
this plan of instruction, and respectable instances of the
accommodation of superior talents to the feeble intellects of infantine
felicity."
Mr Giles Jones was the grandfather of the late Mr Winter Jones,
formerly the Principal Librarian of the British Museum, and the book is
attributed to the first-named gentleman in the catalogue of the British
Museum. It is claimed also that the book offers internal evidence in
support of Mr Giles Jones' authorship, inasmuch as Goody Two Shoes
becomes Lady Jones, and one of the prominent families in the book is
also named Jones.
Beyond this, however, there appears to be no evidence as to Mr Giles
Jones being the writer, and I think something may be said as to the
claim on behalf of the poet Goldsmith, although I am by no means

anxious that the honour of having written it should be ascribed either to
the one or to the other: the following remarks, which are mainly taken
from an article I contributed to the _Athenæum_ in April 1881, are
offered simply as speculations which may not be without interest to
lovers of the little book. They may, perhaps, show that there is some
reason for attributing the work to Oliver Goldsmith, although, of course,
it is not claimed that they absolutely establish the fact.
Having occasion to examine carefully as many of the books for
children published by John Newbery as I could procure (and they are as
scarce as blackberries in midwinter, for what among books has so brief
a life as a nursery book?), I was struck while perusing them with a
certain distinct literary flavour, so to speak, which appeared to be
common to a group of little volumes, all published about the same
period. These were: "Goody Two Shoes," "Giles Gingerbread," "Tom
Thumb's Folio," "The Lilliputian Magazine," "The Lilliputian
Masquerade," "The Easter Gift," "A Pretty Plaything," "The Fairing,"
"Be Merry and Wise," "The Valentine's Gift," "Pretty Poems for the
Amusement of Children Three Feet High," "A Pretty Book of Pictures,"
"Tom Telescope," and a few others. I give abbreviated titles only, but if
space permitted I mould like to quote them in full; they are remarkable
no less for their curious