II. To the Abacus, prior to the Reformation, was added the printed A. B. C. accompanied by prayers and a metrical version of the Decalogue, and in 1553 appeared the first Protestant A. B. C. and Catechism for the use of schools and the young. It is after this date and the accession of Elizabeth that we find a marked and permanent stimulus given to elementary literature; and the press from 1553 onward teemed with A. B. C.’s of all sorts; as, for instance, “an a. b. c. for children, with syllables, 1558;” “an a. b. c. in Latin,” 1559; “the battle of A. B. C.,” 1586; “the horn a. b. c., 1587;” and even the title itself grew popular, not only for manuals of other kinds, but for publishers’ signs and ballads. There was “the aged man’s A. B. C,” the “Virgin’s A. B. C.,” and “the young man’s A. B. C.”
Subsequently to the A. B. C. of 1553, there seems to be nothing actually extant of this nature till we come to The Pathway to Reading, or the newest spelling A. B. C. of Thomas Johnson, 1590, which I have not been able to inspect, but as to which there was a litigation between two publishers in the following year, seeming to shew its popularity and a brisk demand for copies.
A few years later (1610) there is A New Book of Spelling, with Syllables, a series of alphabets, followed by the vowels, alphabetical arrangements of syllables, and remarks on vowels, in the course of which the writer furnishes us with an explanation of the virtue and force of the final e in such monosyllables as Babe.
From vowels he proceeds to the diphthong, where he animadverts on the abuse of the w for the u. He then presents us with the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Decalogue, &c., as orthographical theses.
At the end of the Scriptural selections we arrive at this curious heading: “Certain words devised alphabetically without sense, which whosoever will take the pains to learn, he may read at the first sight any English book that is laid before him.” These words are divided into two classes, dissyllables and words of three and four syllables, and introduced by a few lines of introduction, in which the words are divided by way of guidance.
The spelling-book of 1610 was printed for the Stationers’ Company, by which it had been perhaps taken over; and as the Company did not usually have assigned to it any stock except old copyrights, there is little doubt that there were earlier impressions. At any rate, it is a Shakespearian volume, and, as the only manual for children or illiterate adults except the Protestant A. B. C. of 1553, it becomes interesting to consider that the great poet himself may have had a copy in his hands of some edition, if at least his scholastic researches ever went beyond the Horn-book and the Abacus.
The volume may be regarded as a pioneer in the direction of English orthography and pronunciation; and when the author propounds that you might proceed from his pages to the Latin tongue, he does nothing more than follow in the steps of all teachers of that time, as well as of every other age and country down to almost yesterday.
While I have the book before me, it may be worth while to transfer to these pages a specimen of it:—
kach, kech, kich, koch, kuch,
kash, kesh, kish, kosh, kush,
kath, keth, kith, koth, kuth.
And so it runs through the alphabet. In the Lord’s Prayer and other selections the syllables are also divided for the convenience and ease of the learner.