Of especial interest are the alphabets in “Roman, Italian, and English Names” on the third page, while page four contains the dear old alphabet in rhyme, fortunately not altogether forgotten in this prosaic age. We recognize it as soon as we see it.
“A Apple-Pye
B bit it
C cut it,”
and involuntarily add, D divided it. After the spelling lessons came fables, proverbs, and the splendid “Stories proper to raise the Attention and excite the Curiosity of Children” of any age; namely, “St. George and the Dragon,” “Fortunatus,” “Guy of Warwick,” “Brother and Sister,” “Reynard the Fox,” “The Wolf and the Kid.” “The Good Dr. Watts,” writes Mrs. Field, “is supposed to have had a hand in the composition of this toy book especially in the stories, one of which is quite in the style of the old hymn writer.” Here it is:
“Once on a time two dogs went out to walk. Tray was a good dog, and would not hurt the least thing in the world, but Snap was cross, and would snarl and bite at all that came in his way. At last they came to a town. All the dogs came round them. Tray hurt none of them, but Snap would grin at one, snarl at the next, and bite a third, till at last they fell on him and tore him limb from limb, and as poor Tray was with him, he met with his death at the same time.
Moral
“By this fable you see how dangerous it is to be in company with bad boys. Tray was a quiet harmless dog, and hurt nobody, but, &c.”[45-*]
Thus we find that Locke sowed the seed, Watts watered the soil in which the seed fell, and that Newbery, after mixing in ideas from his very fertile brain, soon reaped a golden harvest from the crop of readers, picture-books, and little histories which he, with the aid of certain well-known authors, produced.
According to his biographer, Mr. Charles Welsh, John Newbery was born in a quaint parish of England in seventeen hundred and thirteen. Although his father was only a small farmer, Newbury inherited his bookish tastes from an ancestor, Ralph or Rafe Newbery, who had been a great publisher of the sixteenth century. Showing no inclination toward the life of a farmer, the boy, at sixteen, had already entered the shop of a merchant in Reading. The name of this merchant is not known, but inference points to Mr. Carnan, printer, proprietor, and editor of one of the earliest provincial newspapers. In seventeen hundred and thirty-seven, at the death of Carnan, John Newbery, then about twenty-four years of age, found himself one of the proprietor’s heirs and an executor of the estate. Carnan left a widow, to whom, to quote her son, Newbery’s “love of books and acquirements as a printer rendered him very acceptable.” The amiable and well-to-do widow and Newbery were soon married, and their youngest son, Francis Newbery, eventually succeeded his father in the business of publishing.