John Bunyan and Early Children's Literature

[0:00] Alexander Richmond is away this weekend on the island and I was just staring here at this beautiful picture of John Bunyan, the focus for today's talk, our distinguished speaker.

[0:12] And I was thinking, John Bunyan looks a bit like Jim Packer. And to come to think of it, Jim Packer's right at my ear, and he's going to introduce this morning our distinguished speaker.

[0:25] So over to Jim. Please, there you go. Let me say at once that John Bunyan is a great focus for a class like this.

[0:48] Of all the Puritans, he is, I think, the most quickly accessible. And there's no doubt that of all the Puritans, he has as much to teach us about walking with God as any of them.

[1:07] And I've been nailed for this chairmanship, this introduction, because our speaker today on Bunyan is a lady who you will very soon discover knows really well what she's talking about.

[1:33] This is Cindy Alders, our librarian at Regent College. Well, our chief librarian. We have more than one librarian.

[1:43] And I count it. And I count it a great privilege, both because I love to see John Bunyan focused on and honoured, as he's going to be.

[1:57] And I know that Dr. Alders knows her stuff and is going to give us a fascinating exposition.

[2:08] So, without more ado, I will get out of the way so that she can get on with it.

[2:20] That's what you've come for. And, well, I'm just delighted to pull the lever and set it all going. Thank you.

[2:30] May I open in prayer for a moment and then pass everything over to you, Cindy? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gracious Father, we thank you for all those who have walked with you down the centuries, those who have known you and loved you and witnessed to you with power.

[2:55] However, we honour the Puritans in that company. And we thank you now for the presentation that we are going to hear.

[3:07] Sustain Cindy, we pray. Thank you for her gifts and her knowledge. Instruct us to our good and to your glory.

[3:21] In the name of Christ, we ask it. Amen. And without more ado, I vanish from the scene, at least, almost, and here comes Cindy.

[3:37] Thank you. Are you comfortable here or do you want to sit on a different chair? Are you comfortable here? Well, I'm comfortable, yeah. Yeah? You... Oh, you're out and taking away. I'm sorry. You're looking at faulting, wouldn't you?

[3:51] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I'll do a few gifts for you. Thank you.

[4:01] Thank you, Dr. Packer. Thank you, Dr. Packer. Yeah. As Dr. Packer mentioned, I am the library director at Regent.

[4:15] I'm also a history professor there. And most of my work has been in the 18th century. I'm slipping a little bit back further into history to talk about Bunyan today, so into the 17th century.

[4:28] And my talk today sort of merges my interests and my livelihoods in books and history. So thank you for coming.

[4:41] So 18th century Britain, which is where I love to spend my time when the 21st century doesn't require me, typically is associated with the origins of children's literature.

[4:56] This was the era of John Newbery, who has become known as the father of children's literature. His first book for the entertainment of children was a little pretty pocketbook intended for the instruction and amusement of little master Tommy and pretty Miss Polly, which was published in 1744.

[5:17] And his most famous book was the history of little goody two shoes, which was published in 16 or sorry, 1765. And incidentally, Newbery's leadership in the field continues to be recognized with the John Newbery Medal.

[5:32] You might recognize that from some children's books still. It's an award that's given annually to the most distinguished contribution to literature for children.

[5:44] By the end of the 18th century, children's literature was a flourishing, separate, and secure part of the publishing industry in Britain. Perhaps as many as 50 children's books were being published annually, mostly in London.

[5:59] The books were clearly meant to please their readers, whether with entertaining stories and appealing characters, the pleasant tone of the writing, or attractive illustrations and eye-catching page layouts and bindings.

[6:15] So as much as I find my second home in the 18th century, today I'm going to, as I said, go a little bit further back in history into the 17th century to consider John Bunyan and his contribution to children's literature.

[6:31] But before I begin, I'd like to give you just a very brief and by no means satisfying biographical introduction to Bunyan. So here he is.

[6:44] He says he looks a lot like Jim Pecker. I don't know. You need to make your own estimation. He was a Puritan minister and author of religious books, including his enormously popular The Pilgrim's Progress, which was published in two parts in 1678 and 1682.

[7:07] After the authorized version of the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare, Bunyan's writings had been foremost among the major books of the English-speaking world. In the 19th century, ships that left the port of London for the British imperial colonies, they were freighted with as many copies of Pilgrim's Progress as the Bible.

[7:31] Bunyan was poor, earning a living as a tinker like his father had before him, which meant that he traveled from place to place, mending pots and doing odd repairs, things like that.

[7:42] His first wife, whose name he never recorded in even his autobiographical writings, was also destitute coming into their marriage, bringing only two Puritan books as a dowry into their marriage.

[7:58] The books began a process of conversion for him, and in time he would become minister to a congregational church in Bedford in England. Soon after marrying in 1649, the Bunyan's first child, Mary, was born blind in the following year.

[8:18] And together they had three more children, Elizabeth, John, and Thomas. His wife died in 1658, and the following year he married Elizabeth, with whom he had two additional children, Sarah and Joseph.

[8:32] And I mention the children in his life because we might imagine that his writing for children was inspired in some way by his own beloved children.

[8:47] Bunyan's life spanned the major historical events of the 17th century, including long periods of intolerance for ministers who did not conform to the established or Anglican church in Britain.

[8:58] For this reason, he spent a total of 13 years in Bedford prison, which is where he began his most famous work, Pilgrim's Progress.

[9:11] In addition to that book, Bunyan published 42 titles, including Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners in 1666, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, published in 1680.

[9:25] I think by default I say 17, because I'm an 18th century historian. The Holy War, published in 1682. And A Book for Boys and Girls, which was published in 1686.

[9:40] And this book is going to be the subject of my talk today. John Bunyan's work has had a profound and complex influence on the history of children's literature and English, but not in the way he might have expected.

[9:55] For over two centuries, the Pilgrim's Progress was essential reading, not in the university of classroom, but in the nursery. It was adopted by children who, let's see, by children who, like Louisa May Alcott's book, Joe March in Little Women, published in 1868, reveled in the journey and the adventure of Bunyan's allegory.

[10:20] As a children's book, it was so common that Francis Hodgson Burnett, L.M. Montgomery, and Mark Twain could assume a basic knowledge of Christian's journey from the city of destruction to the celestial city.

[10:34] Both Montgomery and Twain show their protagonist reading Bunyan with profoundly different responses. While Emily in Montgomery's Emily of New Moon, published in 1923.

[10:47] Anybody read Emily? Yeah? Yeah? Big fan? Well, Emily was proud to have both read and enjoyed Bunyan's allegory, which was the only book her devout aunt's letter read on Sundays.

[11:05] Huckleberry Finn famously judged that the allegory is about a man that left his family. It didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statement was interesting, but tough.

[11:22] Frances Hodgson Burnett published her own rewriting called Two Little Pilgrims' Progress. As the journey of two orphans on their way to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

[11:38] And Enid Blyton's The Land of Far Beyond is a kind of new pilgrim's progress in my own words, she said, and with my own quite new ideas.

[11:50] In novels like Little Women, What Katie Did, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Land of Far Beyond, and many more, a clever child might detect the characters' concerns, even structural patterns of the pilgrim's progress.

[12:08] Running through all these allusions, revisions, and adaptations is the belief that Bunyan's allegory, or some mediated version of it, belongs on each child's bookshelf, becoming one of the most important monuments in the history of children's literature.

[12:31] Now, while The Pilgrims' Progress was written with a general readership in mind, so adults are the only one of the most important ones, the most important ones, and children. Bunyan did publish one book, meant especially for young readers.

[12:41] This is A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rhymes for Children, which he published in 1686.

[12:53] It may be difficult to see at this distance of years how revolutionary that collection of poems was engaging with its young readers through delight and enticement in an approach that would only truly gain ground in the centuries after Bunyan's death.

[13:09] A Book for Boys and Girls, as the title suggests, is a collection of rhymes written for children, an audience which had only in the 17th century been recognized as special in its requirements and capabilities, and thus deserving of its own literature.

[13:26] Published in 1686, it is a collection of 74 poems, ranging from 4 to 192 lines in length, each working to illustrate some aspect of God's way with children, but using only those occupations, objects, creatures, and experiences that children in rural England would know.

[13:53] So it's homely and down-to-earth, and these poems develop a strategy of pleasing in order to instruct that makes them almost unique among early examples of writing for children.

[14:07] Before there can be delight and instruction, however, a child must learn to read. So the collection includes a number of prefatory pages giving instruction in basic literacy. It looks like this.

[14:20] A help to children to learn to read English. It begins with an alphabet in six different fonts, as you can see here.

[14:31] And then it explains vowels, consonants, and syllables as well.

[14:47] And on the next page, there are 58 common children's names, again with syllables separated by hyphens.

[14:57] So, and they're listed here to allow children to learn to spell correctly. These, along with a list of numbers that follows on this second page, or the following page, are offered as enough for little children to prepare themselves for the Psalter or Bible.

[15:19] As you can read down here. I shall forbear to add more, being persuaded this is enough for little children to prepare themselves for a Psalter or Bible. Just to, um...

[15:34] Can you read this? It's a little bit... You know, you need to learn how to read an earlier script. So, um, just be aware of this elongated S, which looks a lot like an F.

[15:51] After reading that for a little while, it just becomes second nature. Persuaded, again. It is a little bit different. Um...

[16:02] Right, so, so after these three pages that he includes right at the beginning of the book, a child should be able to read the Psalter, the Bible, and presumably the poems that follow.

[16:14] Mm-hmm. In this opening, Bunyan allies himself with a long tradition of, um, horn books and battle doors, which you can see here.

[16:27] These communicated the basic material of literacy, and always included the letters of the alphabet, sometimes with accompanying pictures, and some verse like the Lord's Prayer, as an example of what one should learn, one should read, once the letters are known.

[16:43] Okay, so this is a horn book from the 17th century. Um... Yeah. It's hard to know what is book-like about this. It's a paddle.

[16:55] Yes. Yes. No. Um... Um... These survive very well, as they are, uh, and placed on wood.

[17:06] Battle doors are made, um, of paper, and quite a, uh, a primitive kind of paper, so that they, they don't survive in the same way. Um, and they fold up quite nicely for children as well.

[17:19] So this is an 18th century battle door. Um... The opening suggests that Bunyan sees this book as something that preliterate children could use to master their letters.

[17:33] The opening poem ends with a quick tour of the kind of fair primers and horn books that children would regularly encounter, and with encouragement for those who are at first slow to study.

[17:45] Um, I'm sorry. This is the opening poem to the reader. Uh, those... So let's just read this, um, for a little bit.

[17:55] Uh, the title page will show, So, if there thou look, who are the proper subjects of this book? They're boys and girls of all sorts and degrees, for those of age to children on the knees.

[18:08] Thus comprehensive am I in my... notions. They tempt me in it, to it, by their childish motions.

[18:18] We now have boys with beards and girls that be big as old women wanting gravity. So what he's saying there is he's also writing for, um, like, illiterate adults as well, um, to help them, uh, learn to read and, um, then to reflect on these, uh, spiritual themes that we'll see in the poems in a moment.

[18:40] Uh, the poems themselves do not reveal a laureate poet, um, and most leave no doubt that Bunyan's genius was for prose, not poetry.

[18:52] They are intended as country rhymes, um, perhaps in several senses, including simple or rustic. The craftsmanship of the poems is varied, ranging from heights, relatively speaking, of rhetorical exuberance to near doggerel, uh, where Bunyan is a poet.

[19:09] Uh, where Bunyan is quite prepared to create a couplet by rhyming a word with itself. Um, the syntax, it, syntax is often inverted, normally for the sake of the rhyme, in ways that suggest many readers, um, if they were indeed just emerging, emerging from illiteracy, would need a parent or a teacher to guide them.

[19:30] Like other Puritans, Bunyan saw a special reason for children to learn to read, and to interpret rightly what they read. Their very souls depended on it. Each Christian had a responsibility to read scripture.

[19:45] Uh, so universal literacy became a spiritual requirement for women as well as men, the poor as well as the rich, um, and the young as well as adults.

[19:56] Unmediated access to the Bible was necessary for the Christian. So the earlier one gained that access, the better. Um, the early examples of literature for Puritan children, however, had more of brimstone than of treacle about them.

[20:14] Um, Joseph Allen's Alarmed the Unconverted, published in 1673, for example, may address very young children, but the reading list he offers them consists wholly of books written for adults, including Bunyan's, including Bunyan's beloved, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, which was written by the Puritan Arthur Dent and published in 1601.

[20:36] James Janeway's, uh, uh, looks at the child's experience from what may seem to a 21st century audience, a morbid perspective.

[20:51] I've, I've, I've spent a lot of time with Janeway's The Token for Children. And this popular, um, it was very popular, uh, this little book tells stories of 13 godly children as they cheerfully succumbed one after the other to disease and death.

[21:08] Isaac Watts's collection of poems called Divine Songs Attempted an Easy Language for the Use of Children, published in 1715, deals in danger, caution, and the threat of hellfire.

[21:22] The child who does not heed his teachers or his parents' word, for example, can expect that, and I quote, Raven shall pick out his eyes and eagles eat the same, unquote.

[21:34] Yes, harsh. Uh, against the backdrop of cautionary tales and earnest accounts of blessed early deaths, Bunyan's book for boys and girls is refreshingly cheerful in its tone, and attractive in its examples.

[21:50] So, here is, again, the prefatory poem. Um, right, announces the purpose of the collection explicitly in contrast to those ministers who've gone before.

[22:03] Okay, so, um, our ministers long time by word and pen. Sorry, lost that word. Deal. Deal. Deal. Okay. Deal with them, counting them, not boys but men.

[22:14] Thunderbolts they shot at them and their toys. But bit them nor, not, because they were girls and boys. The better charge, the wider still they shot, or else so high, these dwarfs they touched not.

[22:34] Instead of men they found them girls and boys, addict to nothing as to childish toys.

[22:47] Um, so it's saying that, uh, you know, they shot thunderbolts at them. Um, uh, but a better way, um, is sort of a wider shot, uh, to deal with them as boys and girls, rather than as adults in this shocking way.

[23:05] Um, okay. So in the mean, the lowly, and the everyday, God's work can still be done and his plans still be seen.

[23:21] Um, yeah, let's move on. Even more than elevating the everyday, Bunyan often offers another way to read God's will. Puritans are invited to read the book, the Bible, but also to see the world itself, nature, as a book wherein God lays out all one needs to know.

[23:39] Could one but read and meditate upon it? His poems offer children a way to read the book of the world, to go to school with spiders, and to learn from ants, birds, fish, and insects.

[23:54] Just as the verses may help children read well enough to tackle the Bible on their own, so they offer a way to read the world. Through it all, one senses a tender and genuine love for children on the part of Bunyan.

[24:08] In most of the poems that I'll slow down soon and talk about, um, in more detail, Bunyan's method recalls the technique of the emblem book. In these immensely popular works, a picture would be accompanied by varying levels of text.

[24:25] Um, ideally neither image nor text is more important, but they complement each other to pass on a message. Uh, the form was developed in continental Europe, where it enjoyed a greater popularity than England.

[24:39] So it was, um, the first example was the emblemata of Andrea Alciati in 1531, who borrowed the term from the Latin meaning mosaic.

[24:50] But it was not until Geoffrey Whitney's A Choice of Emblems and Other Devices in 1586 that the form found its way to England. Bunyan himself shows his stats to the emblem tradition in the interpreter's house, um, in the Pilgrim's Progress, as Christian and then Christiana are shown a variety of scenes and help to unfold their moral meaning.

[25:14] By the late 17th century, the taste for emblem books in England had largely passed. Most of the poems in Bunyan's collection lack accompanying pictures.

[25:27] This may have a practical cause, uh, because good illustrators were often unavailable or too costly. And it's also possible that Bunyan would have believed the picture is a distraction.

[25:41] Most importantly, the nature of Bunyan's emblems, um, simply made the inclusion of image unnecessary. Bunyan's emblems explored only those things that would be familiar to children in any farm or town in England.

[25:54] So eggs, swallows, cuckoo's, larks and moles, flies, candles, snails, sun and fish, bell ringing, looking glasses and paper, music, plums, butterflies and flints.

[26:13] Of the 74 poems, perhaps only those on thieves, a fig tree and the apparition of evil spirits might take the child's mind further afield in the next farm.

[26:25] The thief would be known, even if not seen. The fig tree was familiar from the Bible. And the poem on the apparition of evil spirits tries to persuade children to avoid the fear of unreal things.

[26:37] So the majority of the poems use only the commonplace to urge moral or divine conclusions. And in that sense, they could also be placed within a tradition of Puritan occasional meditations.

[26:51] Some poems are indeed expressly identified by Bunyan as meditations, such as meditation upon an egg. Meditation upon the peep of day and meditation upon the candle.

[27:05] And yet, Bunyan's collections does not simply conform to the emblematic and meditative tradition. We should also acknowledge its variety, which must have pleased its many, its young readers, especially since the poems do not follow a particular order.

[27:22] We rather shift quite significantly in tone and subject matters. Some poems, such as Upon the Ten Commandments, Upon the Lord's Prayer, and Upon the Creed, dispense basic religious instruction, while others, Upon the Sacraments, recall catechisms, a tradition used by Bunyan again in part two of the pogrom's progress.

[27:45] Upon over much niceness gives a simple moral lesson. Of Moses and his wife provides a training in biblical typology.

[27:58] Here as elsewhere, it is unlikely that Bunyan was consciously working within one particular tradition. But he rather fused several genres that call for one thing to set forward another, as he says in the Apology to the Pilgrim's Progress.

[28:14] The Apology acknowledges, by contrasting the fisherman's and the fowler's arts, the necessity of adapting techniques for the reader's own good. An attitude Bunyan later adopted towards children in a book for boys and girls.

[28:29] So, let's look at some of these poems more closely. So, what we see in Bunyan's little book is a demonstration of how a child might read God's Book of the World.

[28:47] And while there are a number of poems that fit in either category, roughly half deal with human subjects of activity, and the other half with the natural world. Remarkably few of the poems, however, only 11 of the 74 explicitly identified a child as the subject.

[29:06] And those are interspersed throughout the work. The picture of children evoked in these 11 is varied. The typical child being neither a pre-romantic innocent or a Calvinistic sinner.

[29:20] In two poems that have children interacting with nature, one makes the child an emblem of the vain pursuits of grown men. While in the other, the child is a type of Christ. In Of the Boy and Butterfly, seen here, the opening describes a boy vainly chasing the butterfly that will always escape him.

[29:42] So the first stanza. Behold, how eager this our little boy is of this butterfly, as if all joy, all profits, honors, yea, and lasting pleasures, were wrapped up in her, or the richest treasures.

[29:58] Found in her would be bundled up together, when all her all is lighter than a feather. In a collection in which the verse tends to be workmanlike rather than graceful, these lines are among the most conspicuously rhetorical, with alliteration and repetition, all, all, all her all.

[30:22] As if the language itself would take flight. Although these means are used to conjure an image of false importance. So in the second stanza we read, he hellos, runs and cries out, here boys, here.

[30:37] Nor death he brambles, nor death he brambles, or the nettle sphere. He stumbles at the molehills, up he gets and runs again, as one bereft of wits.

[30:49] And all this labor and this large outcry is only for a silly butterfly. So the boy in this stanza, he hellos, runs and cries out, here boys, here.

[31:03] All oblivious to falls, brambles and nettles, as we see. The poem, however, deals gently with the foolish boy. So this is the second part of the poem.

[31:18] Many of his poems have a comparison, which, which follows. So here is the comparison. This little boy an emblem is of those whose hearts are holy at the world's dispose.

[31:33] The butterfly death represent to me the world's best things. At best but fading be. All are but painted nothings and false joys. This, like this poor butterfly to these are boys.

[31:46] His running through nettles, thorns, and briars, to gratify his boyish fond desires. His tumbling over molehills to attain, his and, namely, his butterfly to gain.

[31:57] Doth plainly show what hazards some men run, to get what will be lost as soon as one. Men seem in choice, then children far more wise, because they run not after butterflies.

[32:10] When, yet, alas, for what are empty toys, they follow children, left to beardless boys. So harsh censure is safe for the grown men, who ought to know better, and yet still chase metaphorical butterflies.

[32:25] That's what we're reading in this comparison. In this poem of the child with the bird at the bush, a child actor again figures in a chase of sorts.

[32:40] But this one, the child's intention is to save the flying creature from harm. Here the child speaker is a type of Christ, eager to coax the bird to safety and away from thorns, storms, kites, and snares, and offering instead warmth, good food, silks, occupation, and a palace.

[32:59] So, reading from, sorry, reading from here.

[33:14] I'll teach thee all the notes at court, unthought of music thou shalt play, and all that further do resort shall praise thee for it every day. It seems a really lovely proposal to me, to teach music not yet imagined.

[33:30] And yet, in the end, the bird flies away, preferring danger or perhaps not understanding the child's call. Here is the comparison. This child of Christ, an emblem is, the bird to sinners I compare.

[33:44] The thorns are like those sins of his, which do surround him everywhere. Let's see.

[33:59] Right, this is more of the comparison, the full comparison.

[34:10] So, the bird's own songs are foolish toys which to destruction lead the way. Right here. And the poem concludes, the bird in that she takes her wing to speed her from him after all, shows us vain man loves anything much better than the heavenly call.

[34:32] So, I'm just going to back up one more. The argument is this child does choose to draw to him a bird thus while, shows Christ's familiar speech does use to make to him be reconciled.

[34:47] The comparison not only suggests the child's and by extension Christ's method, which is to use the familiar to draw the sinner forth. It also mirrors Bunyan's own method throughout the collection.

[34:59] Familiar language and appeals draw the bird, the sinner, and the child reader. Here the child becomes a figure not just of Christ, but also of the poet, who coaxes rather than frightens.

[35:11] However lovely and encouraging the poem, however, the foolish bird ignores the call and flies away. In the end, the focus is on the sinner's ability to make a choice, even the wrong choice, as much as Christ's attractive call.

[35:24] I'm just realizing that I've prepared far too much, so I'm just going to conclude this section, then see how far we are, open it up to some questions.

[35:43] More common than poems that deal with children are those that look at common objects made by people. Among the three candle poems, the simplest, the fly at the candle, imagines a fly in a combat with the candle.

[35:58] But the more it attempts to extinguish the light, the more it merely burns itself against a light impervious to its attacks. In Upon the sight of a pound of candles falling to the ground, a wise person who drops candles in the dark is urged to take another candle from above and light it so that it can see to pick up the other candles.

[36:19] The first lit candle in the comparison is Christ. And while this image of Christ is deeply embedded in Christian tradition, the variation of a theological commonplace shows Bunyan at his most interesting in the collection.

[36:34] The child is invited not just to recognize the comparison, but to be delighted in the connection, one that he or she might not have seen before. It is in Meditations upon a candle, one of his longer poems, that Bunyan demonstrates his facility with invention.

[36:55] The ability to find not just one, but many comparisons for a single subject. A real show off piece, this is. The poem is 65 lines long and offers 21 different metaphors.

[37:08] Most of which involve the candle's flame as grace. The wick as the soul, the wax as flesh, and the surrounding darkness as sin.

[37:19] Here, most comparisons occupy just a couplet. With the observation in the first line and the comparison in the second. So here at the bottom we read, But candles in the wind are apt to flare, and Christians in a tempest to despair.

[37:41] Yes. The flame also with smoke attended is, and in our holy lives there is much amiss.

[37:53] Sometimes a thief will candlelight annoy, and lusts do seek our graces to destroy. You can see the line by line kind of comparison, following the observation.

[38:11] One can understand the early historian of children's literature, F.J. Harvey Darton, suggests that Bunyan almost tortured his mind to find comparisons. But there is more in this poem of the virtuoso than the tortured mind.

[38:24] How many comparisons can he manage on a candle, and still hold the attention of a child? The last comparison introduces a difference, both in form and in matter.

[38:36] So these are the last four lines here. The man now lays him down upon his bed. The wig yields up its fire, and so is dead. The candle now is extinct his, but the man, by grace mounts up to glory, there to stand.

[38:55] Here Bunyan identifies the limits of the emblem. A candle is not like a man's life when it is over, because a man can expect a second lighting. Many of the other objects made by people in the collection, the majority of which come in the second half, are presented as either morally neutral or wholly good.

[39:15] In Upon a sheet of white paper, for instance, the paper can be subject unto the foulest pen or fairest. And it will show freely to its readers anything written on it, whether that be wisdom or blot.

[39:29] The looking glass in Upon a Looking Glass can reflect our faults, but only if we are willing to see them. Watches, penny loaves, spectacles, and medicine are all offered as only potential good.

[39:43] What matters is the use to which they are put. Now, I think I'm going to need a second part.

[39:55] Learners. I'm going to skip right ahead now to the conclusion. There are two sections that, on music for children and in the natural world.

[40:16] But let me skip ahead. Another early scholar of children's literature, whose name is Warren Wooden. He was certainly right about the general effect of the later editions.

[40:30] Sorry. Later editions on the reception and readership of Bunyan's little book. So, I'm talking now about the publication history of a book for boys and girls.

[40:48] The version of the collection I've been examining here is Bunyan's own, the edition that was published in 1686 under the title, A Book for Boys and Girls or Country Rhymes for Children.

[41:11] From 1701 on, however, this version of the collection virtually disappeared, to replace by selected and rearranged versions of the original under new titles.

[41:23] So, when George Offer published his edition of Bunyan's works, the collection of children's verse he included was called Divine Emblems and included only 49 of the original 74 poems.

[41:36] The editor's principle of selection is difficult to determine. 40 of the first 50 poems of a book for boys and girls are included, but only 9 of the last 24, which might suggest a simple need for brevity.

[41:50] Poems not conforming to the emblem tradition, such as Upon the Ten Commandments, The Awakened Child's Lamentation, and Upon the Creed are excluded, but so are many, like Upon a Ring of Bells, and Upon the Boy on His Hobby Horse, that do.

[42:07] The prefatory horn book material is missing, as are the last 12 lines of Bunyan's opening. Whatever the editor's intention, it was this truncated version that survived, first under the title, A Book for Boys and Girls or Temporal Things Spiritualized, and from 1724 on, as Divine Emblems or Temporal Things Spiritualized.

[42:32] So, A Book for Boys and Girls, that part was removed. The 1724 title stressed exclusively one aspect of the book, that it contained emblems.

[42:44] And this edition added woodcuts, which, appearing under the title of the poem they illustrate, act like pictorial emblems in an emblem book. So, let me skip through.

[43:05] Oops. So, um... So, the copy you see here is actually from the Rare Books collection at Regent.

[43:17] Um, and I've actually busted it out of the vault to bring with me here today. Um... Which you are most welcome to come and have a look at afterwards, if you'd like.

[43:29] Um... So, I think I'll just conclude my talk this morning by showing you one of my favorites in this illustrated, um... edition, which is called Upon the Swallow.

[43:43] Wow. This pretty bird, oh, how she flies and sings! But could she do so if she had not wings? Her wings bespeak my faith, her songs my peace.

[43:54] When I believe and sing, my doubtings cease. Thank you. Does anybody have... Okay. Thank you.

[44:07] Thank you. Thank you.