CHAPTER XIII
RELIGIOUS BOOKS
Lisping new syllables, we scramble next
Through moral narrative, or sacred text,
And learn with wonder how this world began;
Who made, who marred, and who has ransomed man.
—Tyrocinium. William Cowper, 1784.
It was inevitable, since the colonization of America was in the day of Puritanism, that the first modern literature known by American children should be the distinctive literature of that sect and period. These were religious emblems, controversial treatises, records of martyrdoms, catechismic dialogues, and a few accounts of precociously pious infants who had died. Thomas White, a Puritan minister, wrote thus:—
"When thou canst read, read no ballads and romances and foolish books, but the Bible and the Plaine Man's Pathway to Heaven, a very plaine holy book for you. Get the Practice of Piety, Mr. Baxter's call to the Unconverted, Allen's Alarm to the Unconverted, The Book of Martyrs."
The two books which he named after the Bible had the distinction of being the only ones owned by the wife of John Bunyan. The confiding Puritan child who read The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, under the promise that it was a "plaine and perfite" book, must have been sorely disappointed. But if it wasn't plain it was popular. The twelfth edition is dated 1733. Foxe's Book of Martyrs was found in many colonial homes, and was eagerly read by many children. Neither this nor any of the books on the Rev. Mr. White's list were properly children's books.
A special book for children was written by a Puritan preacher whose sayings were very dull in prose, and I am sure must have been more so in verse. It was called, Old Mr. Dod's Sayings; composed in Verse, for the better Help of Memory; and the Delightfulness of Children reading them, and learning them, whereby they may be the better ingrafted in their memories and Understanding. Cotton Mather also wrote Good Lessons for Children, in Verse.