But inside the garden there were curious knots, with flowers of the older sort and fragrant herbs. As time went on, some of the trees were allowed to grow as they would; the open country could be seen through gaps in the hedge, and the children began to make friends with travellers upon the road.
Good counsels had run into rhyme from the beginning, that they might hang together among wandering thoughts. Thus might the Whole Duty of a Child be remembered.[173] It gave, in short couplets, without figure, all the matter of later exemplary and cautionary verse; and since the lines were spoken in the person of the counsellor, there was a certain dramatic interest added; for he that repeated the lines assumed the part of Monitor.
This is one of the secrets of a child’s pleasure in didactic rhymes. School, dull enough in itself, becomes a live thing the moment it passes into the world of make-believe, and words of caution and authority are a delight when spoken in character.
Pedagogues and guardians of youth discovered in rhythm and rhyme a means of teaching facts otherwise unrelated. Emblem writers, feeling the weakness of their strained symbolism, clutched eagerly at an effectual prop. Emblems without verses had some measure of attraction, for if no natural correspondence seemed to exist between a hypocrite and a frog, or between an egg and a Christian,[174] the things had an interest of their own, and excited curiosity as to possible connections; but without rhymes, it would have been impossible to pair them aright.
Verse, brought as an accessory into school, twinkled a small mirror of imagination. Figures lurked in the letters of the alphabet; rhymed riddles were to be had for the piecing together of syllables. A Little Book for Little Children (1702)[175] had these elements of interest; The Child’s Week’s Work[176] was further lightened by a wide uncurtained schoolroom window, set so low that very small persons could stand a-tiptoe, and get new lessons from the creatures of earth and air. The very moderation of the writer invites acceptance:
“Come, take this Book
Dear Child, and look
On it awhile and try
What you can find
To please your Mind;