Forgotten Books of the American Nursery | Page 7

Education of other children. So I lett ye printer take them & print them, in some hope of some Help to thereby contributed unto that great Intention of a Good Education. The book is entituled Good Lessons for Children; or Instruction provided for a little Son to learn at School, when learning to Read.
Although this small book lives only by record, it is safe to assume from the extracts of the author's diary already quoted, that it lacked every quality of amusement, and was adapted only to those whom he described, in a sermon preached before the Governor and Council, as "verie Sharpe and early Ripe in their capacities." "Good Lessons" has the distinction of being the first American book to be composed, like many a modern publication, for a particular young child; and, with its purpose "to improve in goodness," struck clearly the keynote of the greater part of all writing for children during the succeeding one hundred and seventy-five years.
The first glimpse of the amusement book proper appears in that unique "History of Printing in America," by Isaiah Thomas. This describes, among other old printers, one Thomas Fleet, who established himself in Boston about 1713. "At first," wrote Mr. Thomas, "he printed pamphlets for booksellers, small books for children and ballads" in Pudding Lane.[19-A] "He owned several negroes, one of which ... was an ingenious man and cut on wooden blocks all the pictures which decorated the ballads and small books for his master."[19-B] As corroborative of these statements Thomas also mentions Thomas Fleet, Sr., as "the putative compiler of Mother Goose Melodies, which he first published in 1719, bearing the title of 'Songs for the Nursery.'"
Much discussion has arisen as to the earliest edition of Mother Goose. Thomas's suggestion as to the origin of the first American edition has been of late years relegated to the region of myth. Nevertheless, there is something to be said in favor of the existence of some book of nonsense at that time. The Boston "News Letter" for April 12-19, 1739, contained a criticism of Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms, in which the reviewer wrote that in Psalm VI the translators used the phrase, "a wretch forlorn." He added: "(1) There is nothing of this in the original or the English Psalter. (2) 'Tis a low expression and to add a low one is the less allowable. But (3) what I am most concerned for is, that it will be apt to make our Children think of the line in their vulgar Play song; much like it, 'This is the maiden all forlorn.'" We recognize at once a reference to our nursery friend of the "House that Jack Built;" and if this and "Tom Thumb" were sold in Boston, why should not other ditties have been among the chap-books which Thomas remembered to have set up when a 'prentice lad in the printing-house of Zechariah Fowle, who in turn had copied some issued previously by Thomas Fleet? In further confirmation of Thomas's statement is a paragraph in the preface to an edition of Mother Goose, published in Boston in 1833, by Monroe & Francis. The editor traces the origin of these rhymes to a London book entitled, "Rhymes for the Nursery or Lullabies for Children," "that," he writes, "contained many of the identical pieces handed down to us." He continues: "The first book of the kind known to be printed in this country bears [the italics are mine] the title, 'Songs for the Nursery: or Mother Goose's Melodies for Children.' Something probably intended to represent a goose, with a very long neck and mouth wide open, covered a large part of the title-page; at the bottom of which was: 'Printed by T. Fleet, at his printing house, Pudding Lane (Boston) 1719.' Several pages were missing, so that the whole number could not be ascertained." The editor clearly writes as if he had either seen, or heard accurately described, this piece of Americana, which the bibliophile to-day would consider a treasure trove. Later writers doubt whether any such book existed, for it is hardly credible that the Puritan element which so largely composed the population of Boston in the first quarter of the eighteenth century would have encouraged the printing of any nonsensical jingles.
Boston, however, was not at this time the only place in the colonies where primers and religious books were written and printed. In Philadelphia, Andrew Bradford, famous as the founder of the "American Weekly Mercury," had in 1714 put through his press, probably upon subscription, the "Last Words and Dyeing Expressions of Hannah Hill, aged 11 years and near three Months." This morbid account of the death of a little Quakeress furnished the Philadelphia children with a book very similar to Mather's "Token." Not to be outdone