This toy may have been what is known to-day as a set of alphabet blocks, a commonplace toy. Locke speaks of a game of dice with letters with which children could play a game like "royal-oak," and through which they would learn to spell. He was not the inventor of these "letter-dice," as is generally asserted. It was a stratagem of Sir Hugh Plat, fully explained and illustrated in his Jewel House of Art and Nature, printed in London in 1653, a portion of a page of which is shown here.
The toy seems to have been a success, for the following year Mrs. Pinckney writes to her sister:—
"Your little nephew not yet two and twenty months old prattles very intelligibly: he gives his duty to you and thanks for the toys, and desires me to tell his Aunt Polly that if she don't take a care and a great deal of pains in her learning, he will soon be the best scholar, for he can tell his letters in any book without hesitation, and begins to spell before he is two years old."
This precocious infant, afterward General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of Revolutionary fame, declared in his later life that this early teaching was sad stuff, and that the haste to make him a very clever fellow nearly made him a very stupid one.
A ready way for children to learn their A.B.C.
Cauſe 4 large dice of bone or wood to be made, and upon every ſquare, one of the ſmal letters of the croſs row to be graven, but in ſome bigger ſhape, and the child uſing to play much with them, and being alwayes told what letter chanceth, will ſoon gain his Alphabet, as it were by the way of ſport or paſtime. I have heard of a pair of cards, whereon moſt of the principall Grammer rules have been printed, and the School-Maſter hath found good ſport thereat with his ſchollers.
Facsimile from Jewel House of Art and Nature