observance. The preface to Part 1 asks the reader: ‘How art thou now affected, poor
Child, in the reading of this Book? Have you ever shed a tear since you begun reading?’
Children were given Janeway to improve their souls as much as their reading. Books
such as this were not intended for amusement, although by the time John Harris was
publishing Janeway in 1804 along with other ‘pious little works’ in a gift box, its original
impact had degenerated somewhat, largely because other lighter material served as an
antidote. To the seventeenth-century child, there was little choice. John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) remains as the best loved classic of the Puritan period, and
Bunyan’s allegory was recognised by him as having a special appeal to children, but this
too was a work of devotion rather than imagination. Children’s delight at Christian’s
adventures on his journey to the Celestial City was not intended to obscure the moral
meaning.
Abraham Chear, one of the most popular of the Puritan writers, whose work was used
in many others’ books, had his verse published in A Looking Glass for the Mind (1672), a
book of poems and elegies which went into four editions by 1708. This book is remarkable
only for its popularity; like many others of its kind it was bought by parents seeking to
educate their children for a good life and a holy death. Publishers, though, were
realising the worth of the market for these ‘good godly books’ and by the 1670s many
more were being published. Benjamin Keach was one of the most prolific of the Puritan
authors; his War with the Devil (l673), which describes the fight for a young man’s soul
between Conscience, Truth, the Devil and Christ, was still being published in the mid-
eighteenth century, when it was advertised as ‘necessary to be read by all Christian
families’. Another much read author was Nathaniel Crouch, editor and publisher as well
as writer; his pseudonym was ‘R.B.’—Richard Burton. The Young Man’s Calling (1678),
Youth’s Divine Pastime (3rd edn, 1691) and Winter Evening Entertainments (1687) were
conventional in tone and contained much that was repackaged from other works:
riddles, stories, morals.
There were those in addition to Bunyan who stood above the mediocrity of Puritan
religious tracts. William Ronksley’s work, for example, displayed considerable interest in
the child as reader. His The Child’s Weeks-Work: or, A Little Book so nicely suited to the
Genius and Capacity of a Little Child...that it will infallibly Allure and Lead him on into a
may of Reading (1712) was moral in its intention but so well composed with neat rhymes
for every day of the week that the child would have undoubtedly been charmed by it.
Isaac Watts also wrote at the turn of the century, at the point when Puritanism was
losing some of its ferocity in dealing with children. Like Ronksley, Watts wrote gentle
verse; his Divine Songs attempted in Easie Language for the Use of Children (1715)
continued as a staple of the nursery through to the Victorian period and was lovingly
parodied by Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The duty children owed
to parents was his particular theme, but the lesson is easily read and could be liltingly
spoken:
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the dayEARLY TEXTS USED BY CHILDREN 139