Of this same “Goody Two Shoes” a facsimile reprint of the first edition was published in 1882, with an introduction in which was discussed the reasons for assigning the authorship to Oliver Goldsmith. Later knowledge and reflection confirm the conviction that it could have been by no other hand, though Newbery may have helped in planning it.

But we have not space for a tenth of these quaint advertisements and attractive and original titles; and in taking leave of them it is scarcely too much to say that nine-tenths of the titles in any advertisement of children’s books, by Thomas, Cushing, or any other New England printers of the last half of the eighteenth century, will be found in the catalogue printed at the end of the life of John Newbery — sometimes with words or phrases changed to suit the plainer republican taste of this country, or better to suit the comprehension of the young people born on American soil. The text of the little books was, as may readily be supposed, frequently edited, with the same object in view. Some information on this subject is given in detail in Mr. Whitmore’s book, to which fuller reference is made later on; and a striking example of the translated advertisement may be found in one of the little volumes of “The Olden Time Series,” edited by Henry M. Brooks, in which is printed an announcement from the Salem Mercury, in 1789, of a list of books published by T. Cushing. Every one of the titles in the advertisements is in the catalogue of Newbery’s publications. A whole article might be devoted to a description of the contents of these little books, which would be “vastly entertaining.” The most inveterate logrollers of today or of any period never employed “the puff direct, the puff preliminary, the puff collusive and the puff oblique or puff by implication” so skilfully, nor be it said so unblushingly, as did Newbery. His advertisements were masterpieces of one branch of the art, and the manner in which he introduced allusions to his medicines and to other books in the little volume which he published is barefaced enough to include every other.

The contents of many of the books, in spite of the advertisements declaring them always to be highly moral in tone, were sometimes more free and outspoken than we should tolerate nowadays; and the style was frequently dull, heavy, didactic, prosy and stilted, partaking of the character of the “age of prose and reason,” in which they were produced. There was still to be found in some of them a perverse, barbarous and trivial element; and sometimes what we now should call immoral, cruel and foolish ideas pervaded them. But, on the whole, they struck an entirely new note, opened out a fresh field, and prepared the way for the better things which have followed: —those charming and uplifting products of the imagination which, as President Eliot says, teach that the supreme attainment of any individual is vigor and loveliness of character, and implant and encourage industry, perseverance and veracity in word and act. Newbery’s books, however, generally tended to encourage whatsoever things were pure and lovely and of good report according to the lights of the days in which they were written. While many of them have long since been deservedly forgotten and some have absolutely disappeared