IV
Armand Berquin was born in France in 1749. He refused an appointment as tutor to the son of Louis XVI. Towards the end of his life he was denounced as a Girondist, and driven into exile. He died in 1791.
Mr. Charles Welsh gives a most interesting account of him in his introduction to the reprint of The Looking-Glass for the Mind, published by Griffith, Farran, Okeden and Welsh, 1885.
Mrs. Pilkington, writing “on the Plan of that celebrated work Les Veillées du Château, by Madame de Genlis”, produced Tales of the Cottage; or Stories Novel and Amusing for Young Persons, printed for Vernor & Hood in the Poultry, and sold by E. Newbery, 1799.
She was the wife of a naval doctor, and became governess to a family of orphans, for whom she wrote. Other books published for her by E. Newbery include Biography for Boys, 1808; Biography for Girls, 1809; Marvellous Adventures; or the Vicissitudes of a Cat, and a translation (abridged) of Marmontel’s Contes Moraux.
Le Théâtre d’Education was followed, in England, by Hannah More’s Sacred Dramas (1782).
Moral plays by the German Rousseauists, Engel and Weisse, were translated in The Juvenile Dramatist (1801), and Dramas for Children, imitated from the French of L. F. Jauffret, by the Editor of Tabart’s Popular Stories, was printed for M. J. Godwin, at the Juvenile Library, Skinner Street, in 1809. The table of contents includes “The Curious Girl;” “The Dangers of Gossipping”; “The Fib Found Out”; “The Little Coxcomb”.
These educational dramas are no more dramatic than the average moral tale. They may be regarded as a result of Rousseau’s realism, an effort on the part of educators to use the dramatic instincts of children to impress the lesson.