The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.
XVI. Children’s Books.
§ 6. Bunyan’s Divine Emblems.
To take the youngest first. The parent work in it has, naturally, been overshadowed by greater works in the chapter on its author in a previous volume. 8 All through the eighteenth century, a work called Divine Emblems; or Temporal Things Spiritualized, by John Bunyan, was recurrent in little rough editions. It was not until 1889 that this was identified as a curtailed version of a longer book—A Book for Boys & Girls: or, Country Rhimes for Children. By J. B. The first edition contained seventy-four “meditations”; in 1701, an editor revised it ruthlessly, and cut the number of emblems down to forty-nine. It consists of short poems—exceedingly bad poetry, but plain rugged morality—on such subjects as the frog, the hen, and other common objects, each with a rimed moral. Bunyan declares his object:
| | | I do’t to show them how each fingle-fangle, |
| On which they doting are, their souls entangle, |
| As with a web, a trap, a gin, or snare, |
| And will destroy them, have they not a care. |
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| His “morals” are as recondite and laborious as those of Gesta Romanorum. The importance of the book lies in its authorship, its intention and its method. It reveals not a little of the inspired tinker’s mind. It shows a real desire to provide something special for children, not merely the old clothes of adult literature cut down. And it is a deliberate use of a responsible artistic form and of material not traditional but original. |
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