[31] She is the author of a remarkably bold “Manuel du Voyageur” en
Six Langues. Paris, Barrois, 1810. Framed to meet every conceivable
occasion.
[32] Day was honest in his intentions, however mistaken his policy
may have been. Sabrina finally married a Mr. Bicknell, who willingly
allowed her to accept support, meagre as it was, from Day.
[33] Mrs. Godwin [Mary Wollstonecraft] (1759–1797) began, as an
exercise, to translate “The Elements of Morality, for the Use of
Children,” written by the Reverend Christian Gotthilf Salzmann
(1744–1811), who won no small renown for the excellence of his school,
founded upon the principles set down by Rousseau. “The design of this
book,” says the worthy master, “is to give birth to what we call a
good disposition in children.” The chief delight of the 1782 edition,
published in three volumes, are the copperplates which represent in the
most graphic way, by pose, gesture, expression, and caption, all the
ills that juvenile flesh is heir to. No one, after having once viewed
the poor little figure seated on a most forbidding-looking sofa, can
quite resist the pangs of sympathy over his exclamation: “How sad is
life without a friend!” Life is indeed a direful wilderness of trials
and vexations. The prismatic colors of one’s years shrivel up before
such wickedness as is expressed by the picture “I hate you!” And yet
how simple is the remedy for a boy’s bad disposition, according to
the Reverend Mr. Salzmann! “Teach him,” so the philosopher argues
in his preface, “that envy is the vexation which is felt at seeing
the happiness of others: you will have given him a just idea of
it; but shew him its dreadful effects, in the example of Hannah in
chap. 29, vol. II, who was so tormented by this corroding passion,
at her sister’s wedding, that she could neither eat, drink, nor
sleep, and was so far carried away by it as to embitter her innocent
sister’s pleasure; this representation has determined the child’s
disposition--he will hate envy.” Elements of Morality ... Translated
from the German.... 3d ed. (3 vols.) London, 1782.
[34] Charles Lamb has recorded his vivid impressions of this book in
“Witches and Other Night Fears.”
[35] It is interesting to note the longevity of many of the women
writers of this period. Both Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld died
in their eighty-second year, while Miss More reached the ripe age of
eighty-eight. Mrs. Trimmer, nearing seventy, was thus comparatively
young at the time of her death. A glimpse of Miss More at seventy-nine
is left in the reminiscences of the original Peter Parley, who visited
her, _circa_ 1823, much as a devout pilgrim would make a special
journey. He wrote: “She was small and wasted away. Her attire was of
dark-red bombazine, made loose like a dressing-gown. Her eyes were
black and penetrating, her face glowing with cheerfulness, through
a lace-work of wrinkles. Her head-dress was a modification of the
coiffure of her earlier days--the hair being slightly frizzled, and
lightly powdered, yet the whole group of moderate dimensions.”
[36] _Vide_ the lay sermon by Samuel McCord Crothers, “The Colonel in
the Theological Seminary.”--_Atlantic_, June, 1907. Also Emerson’s
essay on “Spiritual Laws.”
[37] _Vide_ Miss Strickland’s “Lives of the Seven Bishops.”
[38] For Jane Taylor, _vide_ “Contributions of Q Q;” “Essays in Rhymes
on Morals and Planners.” For Ann Taylor, _vide_ “Hymns for Infant
Schools.”
[39] Frederic Harrison, in his “The Choice of Books,” (Macmillan, 1886)
writes:
“Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish
for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dung-heaps. Be it just or
earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the
frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the
dignity of literature,--literature I mean, in the gross, which includes
about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books
as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart
from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them?”
[40] The reader is referred to “The Moral Instruction of Children,” by
Felix Adler, New York: Appleton, 1892. Besides considering the use to
be made of fairy tales, fables, and Bible stories, the author discusses
fully the elements in the Odyssey and the Iliad which are valuable
adjuncts in moral training.