an almanac for the year 1691. The public are there informed that a second impression is ‘in press, and will suddenly be extant,’ and will contain, among much else that is new, the verses ‘John Rogers the Martyr’ made and left as a legacy to his children. When the second impression became extant, a rude cut of Rogers lashed to the stake and, while the flames burned fiercely, discoursing to his wife and nine small children, embellished the verses, as it has done in every one of the innumerable editions since struck off. The tone of the Primer is deeply religious. Two-thirds of the four-and-twenty pictures placed before the couplets and triplets in rhyme, from
‘In Adam’s fall
We sinned all,’
to
‘Zaccheus, he
Did climb a tree
Our Lord to see,’
represent biblical incidents. Twelve words of ‘six syllables’ are given in the spelling lesson; five of them are abomination, edification, humiliation, mortification, purification. More than half the book is made up of the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, some of Watts’s hymns, and the whole of that great Catechism which one hundred and twenty divines spent five years in preparing. There, too, are Mr. Rogers’s verses, and John Cotton’s ‘Spiritual Milk for American Babes’; exhortations not to cheat at play, not to lie, not to use ill words, not to call ill names, not to be a dunce, and to love school. The Primer ends with the famous dialogue between Christ, Youth and the Devil.”
One of the germs of the book is to be found in one of the earliest books printed for children in this country, entitled “The Protestant Teacher for Children,” issued in Boston in 1685 by Samuel Green, in which were the verses made by Mr. John Rogers. “The Famous Dialogue” is probably by Benjamin Keach, who was tried in 1666 for writing “The Child’s Instructor: or a New English Primer,” which contained a catechism with leanings towards Anabaptist teaching; and its source is possibly to be found in his book entitled ‘War with the Devil: or the Young Man’s Conflict with the Powers of Darkness, in a Dialogue, Discovering the Corruption and Vanity of Youth, the Horrible Nature of Sin, and Deplorable Condition of Fallen Man.” This became very popular in England as a chapbook, and with its quaint woodcuts and strong Calvinism, suited the prevailing taste of that period.
A great number of primers, of which the “New England” was the forerunner, were published all over the country during the first hundred years after the appearance of that work. Among them may be mentioned “A Primer for the Colony of Connecticut, or an Introduction to the true Reading of English,” to which is added “Milk for Babes” (i.e., the Rev. John Cotton’s catechism for children), which was published by Timothy Green; but this does not appear to have caused any great number of New Englanders to swerve from their allegiance to their own famous little book. From primers to schoolbooks generally the step is a natural one; but only the very briefest glance can be permitted at the early schoolbooks in New England; to write their history and trace their development would require a volume. A third edition of “The Child’s New Spelling Book” was published in 1744. “The Youth’s Instructor in the English Tongue’ was published in 1757. We find Dillworth’s ‘Spelling Book,” a reprint of an English book, in a catalogue ten years later; and two years after that, Henry’s “Universal Spelling Book.” Then came Noah Webster’s “Grammatical Institute,” and later his “New England Spelling Book.” Meanwhile Mayor’s spelling book and others of English origin were not unknown here. The famous “Reading Made Easy,” or “Readamadeasy,” as it was
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