Paradigm, Vol 2, No 1 (January, 2000)

The influence of Issac Watts’s Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1715) was at its greatest in the movement of popular education at the end of the eighteenth century. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825), in her successful Hymns in Prose for Children in 1781, deplored the children’s books of the time: ‘it would be difficult to find one calculated to assist them in the devotional part of it, except indeed Dr. Watts’s Hymns for Children’ (preface). Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) publishedA Comment on Dr. Watts’s Divine Songs for Children, with Questions in 1789, and wrote: ‘Of all the Religious Books which have been written for Children, I know of none that is committed to memory with so much delight, as the DIVINE SONGS OF DR. WATTS’ (advertisement). Elizabeth Hill’s (dates unknown) The Poetical Monitor (1796),¹ though rarely studied today, is another remarkable example which was designed to continue Watts’s work. The subtitle of The Poetical Monitor reads, ‘Consisting of Pieces Select and Original, for the Improvement of the Young in Virtue and Piety; Intended to Succeed Dr. Watts’ Divine and Moral Songs’.² It was intentionally designed for the use of charity school children, as is made clear on the title page: ‘published for the benefit of the Shakespear’s-Walk Female Charity-School, St George in the East’.

The development of devotional and moral education using hymns or poetical pieces in Protestant Dissenters’ charity schools after Watts had already had a long tradition, and cannot be traced very easily. However, the continuity of the high esteem enjoyed by Watts’s hymns, and their influence on the education of charity schools at the turn of the century from the nineteenth century can be glimpsed through Hill’s aim and achievement. In this paper, I will introduce Hill’s two anthologies of devotional verse: The Poetical Monitor, and A Sequel to the Poetical Monitor (1811 or before)³, and examine how devotional and moral education for children (notably girls, of the lower classes) took its place in the development of the teaching of poetry.

he Poetical Monitor was published and sold by T.N. Longman. Other booksellers where it could be bought are found on the title page: J. Johnson, St Paul’s Churchyard; C. Dilly, Poultry; A. Cleugh, Ratcliff-Highway. Ratcliff-Highway (the old name of the Highway in Shadwell) led to the High Street, and Shakespear’s Walk, where the school was situated, was off the High Street. It was sold also by ‘The secretary, by order sent to the school’. The price was two shillings (common paper, bound) or, three shillings and six pence (fine wove paper, hot pressed, bound in calf). The second edition was published in 1798, and from then to 1831, eleven editions, at least, were published.⁴

Shakespear’s Walk Protestant Dissenters’ Charity School was originally situated in the parish of St Paul, Shadwell, and was founded in 1712 by voluntary subscription, for the purpose of ‘educating and clothing 30 poor boys’. A similar school for girls was built in the same neighbourhood, but seems to have been managed independently. Around 1800, at the time when Hill’s two books were published, the total number of pupils in both schools was one hundred and forty. Compared with other schools, these were two of the largest schools in and about London and Westminster. In 1817, the number of pupils in the boys’ school rose to seventy. The girls’ school, thus, seems to have been almost the same size as the boys’.⁵ From Hill’s dedication of the Monitor to the patronesses of the school, the purposes of the female school are basically similar to those of the boys’, educating and clothing poor children. Hill approved the school’s achievements not only in ‘the orderly behaviour, and cleanliness of the Children’, but in the children’s ‘mental improvement’ resulting from the school’s ‘FEMALE MANAGEMENT and INSPECTION’. Hill addressing the patronesses of the school wrote: ‘The wish to assist, in some degree, your good purposes, led to the idea of forming this collection of Poetical Pieces, Devotional and Moral’.

The editor’s name is not found on the title page, nor in any part of the book. Charles James Longman, in his history of the firm, attributed it to Elizabeth Hill,⁶ and the ledgers and other documents of the house of Longman have confirmed his opinion.⁷ Little is known about Elizabeth Hill, however; the only known published works attributed to her are the Monitor and its sequel, and bibliographically, she is individualised only as the ‘Editor of the "Poetical Monitor"’.⁸ But establishing the identity of the editor does not make certain the authorship of more than one-third of the contents. This is a collection of one hundred and forty-four pieces, sixty-one anonymous. Another eighty-three are given explicit authorship (usually by surnames). In her dedication she says, ‘I have to acknowledge the favour of some original pieces (the Authors of which I was not at liberty to announce) which would have been ornaments to any collection’. Among them are Charles Wesley’s ‘Hymn for Easter Day’ (with the title ‘The Resurrection’ in the Monitor), and ‘The Humble Majesty of the Prince of Peace’ (here ‘Christ the Light of the World’) of John Needham (c.1725-c.1786), another hymn writer. It could be said that some of the sixty-one anonymous pieces may be by the editor herself.

The Monitor is in four parts. The main part, two-thirds of the whole volume, comprises devotional verses. The section reflects the editor’s idea that ‘as Religion enters so essentially into human happiness, I persuade myself the greater number of Devotional Pieces in this Collection will be judged a recommendation’. It includes nine pieces by Philip Doddrige (1702-51), one of the first editors of Watts’s works, seven by Anne Steele (1717-1778), six by Nathaniel Cotton (1707-88),⁹ author of Visions in Verse, for the Entertainment and Instruction of Younger Minds (1751), five by Watts (though not from Divine Songs), four each by Simon Browne (?1680-1732), Elizabeth Scott (1708-1776), Joseph Fawcett (1758?- 1804), and Ottiwell Heginbothom (dates unknown), and the remaining few are by others. It is notable that all the main authors named are known as hymn writers, this collection, then, being hymnal. Among the pieces of unknown authorship, ‘The Proper Return for Maternal Tenderness’ was clearly intended to have a powerful emotional appeal:

Thy Mother honour - for her arms
Secur’d thee from a thousand harms:
When, helpless, hanging on her breast,
She sooth’d thy infant heart to rest:
Thoughtful of thee, before the day
Shot thorough the dark, its rising ray;
Thoughtful of thee, when sable night
Again had quench’d the beams of light;
To Heaven, in ceaseless pray’r for thee,
She rais’d her hand, and bent her knee.¹⁰

Such lauding of the maternal echoes Watts’s stanza in ‘A Cradle Hymn’: ‘Soft, my child! I did not chide thee, / Tho’ my song might sound too hard; / ‘Tis thy mother sits beside thee, / And her arms shall be thy guard’.¹¹

The second part includes nine pieces ‘For Children in Charity-Schools’, seven anonymous and two by Westley.¹² Most likely some of the anonymous ones could have been written by Hill, and most pieces possibly were sung as school hymns. Usually they profess the pupil’s gratitude to God, and to the patrons of the school as well, for giving them the opportunity to learn. The last piece, ‘Contentment and Thankfulness’, ends with:

When thus we work, when thus we live,
Our Patrons will rejoice
To see the poor to knowledge brought,
And making GOD their choice.¹³

The twenty-two ‘miscellaneous’ pieces collected in the same part deal with time, seasons, flowers, animals and friends, as well as moral ones, including Hannah More’s (1745-1833) ‘Virtue and Vice Progressive’, besides five fables. At the end of the volume, sixteen ‘Epitaphs are added, as they are known to encourage the attention of the young in a greater degree than any other compositions equally instructive and solemn’ (preface). The most impressive piece in this section is anonymous and is called ‘The Address of a Lady’s Scull, Placed on a Piller, Near the Former’, in which some phrases remind one of Watts’s ‘A thousand Children young as I / Are call’d by Death to hear their Doom’.¹⁴

BLUSH not, ye Fair, to own me, but be wise;
Nor turn from sad mortality your eyes.
I once was lovely, and belov’d like you.
Where are my vot’ries where my flatt’rers now?
Gone with the subject of each lover’s vow.¹⁵

The contrast between the worldly pleasures of youth and forthcoming trials is also seen in another hymn by Watts: ‘Enjoy the day of mirth but know, / There is a day of judgement too’.¹⁶

Besides the increased attention given to entertainment, the main features of this anthology are, firstly, that it comprises many hymns. Secondly, the ratio of the works of so-called minor poets to major ones is comparatively higher than that of other collections in the latter half of the eighteenth century, a matter to be touched upon in part III. (Quite a few poets are not even found in Elegant Extracts (1784), Vicesimus Knox’s [1752-1821] huge volume). Thirdly, it contains many works, about one-third, by women poets. If we assume that most of the anonymous poems were by Hill or other women poets, the ratio would naturally be much higher.

To the second edition was added a two-page advertisement dated July 20th, 1798. ‘A small alteration is made in this Edition; a few pieces being omitted (The leading sentiments of which were contained in others that remain) to give room for some on interesting subjects not before introduced.’ And she ended it with the words: ‘The wish to mingle a further degree of entertainment with moral and religious instruction, will, at least, be acceptable to the Young, whose improvement in every thing amiable and excellent the EDITOR considers as an object of high importance’. For the word ‘entertainment’ in this context, Hill, of course, is indebted to Watts’s preface to Divine Songs: ‘There is something so amusing and entertaining in Rhymes and Metre, that will incline Children to make this part of their Business a Diversion’. The newly added pieces are Lady Sophia Burrell’s (1750-1802) ‘The Field Mouse’, a fable of an adventurous mouse, and three anonymous pieces. It is notable that two of the anonymous ones concern the social reform movements of the age: anti-slavery and the prevention of cruelty to animals.¹⁷ Six pieces from the first edition are omitted.

A Sequel to the Poetical Monitor, Consisting of Pieces Select and Original, Adapted to Improve the Minds and Manners of Young Persons was published about fifteen years later by the same publisher. This time, the editor, ‘ELIZ. HILL’ was explicitly stated. The school at Shakespear’s Walk is not mentioned. As booksellers, Law and Whittaker, and Darton and Co. are named, Johnson and Dilly unlisted. The price was three shillings and six pence, bound. In the dedication of the Monitor, the editor wrote that most of the pieces of many selections then extant were ‘too sublime to be understood by Children’. The advertisement of the Sequel, after the success of the preceding volume, proudly claims that Hill ‘was not mistaken in her supposition of a chasm between the DIVINE SONGS of DR. WATTS and the various SELECTIONS extant’. Also it is stated that this is ‘adapted to Young Persons nearly approaching maturity’. Her choice of this collection, thus, is ‘directed not so much to those pieces which are distinguished by superior genius and beautiful poetry, as to those which exhibit lively and pointed descriptions of the deformity of folly and vice, and the beauty of wisdom and virtue’. The word ‘vice’ in this context also can be found in the sub-title of another literary anthology of her time, Beauties in Prose and Verse (1783), reading, ‘The whole calculated to exhibit the most striking pictures of virtues and vice to the minds of youth’.¹⁸ Hill assumes the older readers’ more literary understanding.

The Sequel consists of two parts: the main part contains one hundred and one poetical pieces, and the other, ten epitaphs. ‘In disposing the pieces, order has been observed as far as the nature and great variety of the subjects would admit’: with this policy, the poems are divided into six groups, totalling seventy-four named pieces, and twenty-seven anonymous. In this selection, more pieces are of known authorship than in the Monitor. Nine are by the Rev. Henry Moore (1732-1802) of Liskeard, hymn writer, six by William Cowper (1731-1800), five by Hannah More, four by James Montgomery (1771-1854), hymn writer, and the rest by a variety of poets. Some of them are canonical names such as Pope and Dr Johnson, but most are minor or obscure.

It might be said that the sequel is less devotional, and more oriented to contemporary literary fashion, and to the female compiler’s and readers’ taste. It is notable that the Sequel includes some philanthropist writers who had became popular, among them Montgomery, Hannah More, Ameria Opie (1769-1853) and William Roscoe (1753-1831), all campaigners with Cowper against the slave-trade. At the same time, they were popular writers of children’s books, like Barbauld. Also notable inclusions are Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), Hester Chapone (1721-1801) and More, members of the Blue Stocking Circle, alongside some of the men, such as Dr Johnson and James Beattie (1735-1803). Though some school anthologies around 1810 already included some pieces by Southey, Coleridge, Burns, Scott and Wordsworth, still the Romantics did not hold so prominent a place in many of them as in the Sequel.¹⁹ The Sequel, however, includes works of Charlotte Smith (1748-1806) and Elizabeth Moody (1814), as well as Barbauld, More and Opie, who were all widely respected and widely read women poets in the age of the apparently male-dominated Romantic movement. A note to the index indicates: ‘Where no Names are inserted, the Pieces are either original, or the Authors not known to the Editor’. Among them, ‘Castle-Building, An Elegy’ shows a touch of the Romantic with its hint of topographical reverie:

I woo thee, FANCY, from thy fairy cell,
Where ‘midst the num’rous woes of human-kind,
Wrapt in ideal bliss thou lov’st to dwell,
And sport in happier regions unconfin’d.
Deep sunk, O Goddess! in thy pleasing trance,
Oft let me seek yon low sequester’d vale;
Whilst Wisdom’s self shall steal a side-long glance,
And smile, perchance &endash; yet listen to my tale.
Happly my path may lie through barren vales,
Where niggard fortune all her sweets denies;
Ev’n there shall Fancy scent the ambient gales,
And scatter flow’rets of a thousand dyes.²⁰

Compared with the Monitor, then, in the Sequel, the ratio of pieces with the writers’ name to those without is higher. It, too, comprises many works of minor and obscure poets, while the ratio of works by women poets is higher also.

In her dedication to the Monitor, Hill cites Watts’s preface to Divine Songs to show in what sense she had intended to realize his aim to publish a book of devotional and moral verse. First, as we have already seen, she suggests that it is a great pleasure for children to learn truths and duties through rhymes and metre. Second, if they learn something in verse, it will be ‘longer retained in memory’. Thirdly, they ‘will not be forced to seek relief for an emptiness of mind out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age’. Then she writes: ‘It may be more especially necessary that the minds of the poor should be furnished, early in life, with ideas on important subjects, as they may have little opportunity for improvement after their entrance on the world’. Basically, this statement of views on the education of the children of the poor corresponds to that of Watts. He insisted in 1728 that it was necessary for the children of the poor to be offered ‘the Hand of Bounty to train them up to some degree of Knowledge, and to the Practice of Vertue, and put them in a Way to support themselves by honest Labour’.²¹

For some time after Watts, however, there were few hymnals for children. John Cennick’s (1718-1755) Sacred Hymns, for the Children of God in the Days of Their Pilgrimage (1741 or before) or Charles Wesley’s Hymns for Children (1763) would appear to be rare examples. It was mainly in the Sunday School movement that people recognized the need of them. Robert Hawker (1753-1827) edited Psalms and Hymns Sung by the Children of the Sunday School (1787 or before) which included forty-four of Watts’s, and thirty-five Olney Hymns (1779) written by William Cowper and John Newton (1725-1807), the evangelical curate. Rowland Hill’s (1744-1833) Divine Hymns Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1790), revised by Cowper before publication, and intended for the Southwark Sunday School Society, contained forty-four hymns.²² Ordinary hymnals hardly seem to have included a separate section for children or adolescents. Even in the mid-nineteenth century, ‘the place of children in worship was still considered to be confined to their lessons in the Sunday schools’.²³ The re-evaluation of Divine Songs at the end of the eighteenth century could be interpreted as anticipating the new hymns for youth. Hill, too, intended, in another way from Barbauld’s book meant mainly for home use, and Cowper and Newton’s hymns for Sunday Schools, to succeed Watts, ‘the first writer of children’s hymns’,²⁴ he being involved in the movement of Dissenters’ charity schools for children of the lower classes.

Meanwhile, by Hill’s time, some anthologies of verse, or of prose and verse, which were explicitly compiled for the use of schools, had already appeared. The Poetical Miscellany (1762), for instance, consisted mainly of works by Milton, Dryden, Pope, Addison, Gay, Young, and Thompson among others, with three by Watts, though not from Divine Songs. The Elegant Extracts of Knox, headmaster of Tonbridge, was published in many editions after the 1780s. It includes poems by Milton, Dryden, Addison, Rowe, Pope and Thomson, and the compiler’s contemporaries such as Smollett, Smart, Goldsmith, Cowper and Burns, among others, and also all the hymns of Watts’s Divine Songs, including the moral songs later added such as ‘The Rose’ and ‘A Cradle Hymn’. Lucy Aikin’s (1781-1864) Poetry for Children, Consisting of Short Pieces, to Be Committed to Memory (1801) comprised works by Pope, Dryden, Addison, Darwin, and others.²⁵ Some in these collections, naturally, overlap with those in the Monitor and the Sequel. In this sense too, they are to be categorized as verse collections for schools. At least they could be called books for schools with a dual purpose for both devotional and literary education. The Monitor was, in some sense, a book of hymns, and, at the same time, it was a literary anthology compiled for the use of charity school children. The Sequel, meanwhile, was designed more to encourage literary development than for devotional purposes.

Hill’s anthologies are significant because they were published chiefly for the use of late Dissenters’ charity schools, not the Anglican schools which were abundantly supplied mainly by the S.P.C.K. The Monitor especially is a rare and remarkable example of a textbook which was originally conceived with one specific school for girls in mind. They were conceived of as successors to Watts’s in their devotional purpose, but might be used to promote literacy by the use of non-sectarian and non-devotional material, with a generally moral and humanitarian bias. They reflect the changing phases of both literary and devotional education in late charity schools, and heralded the general secularization of the public curriculum in the mid-century.²⁶

The Monitor includes many hymns and is intended more for devotional use than its sequel or other school anthologies of the age. The Sequel, which was produced for older readers, is more influenced by literary fashion and the compiler’s taste: the Blue Stockings, the philanthropic writers, popular writers for children, and female Romantics. It is more literary and general than devotional and moral. Naturally, the dedication to the Shakepear’s Walk Female Charity School was omitted. The difference between the Monitor and the Sequel in matters of lay-out, of course, can be partly explained by the reader’s age. But, at the same time, it is manifest that the teaching of secular literature was becoming a recognized part of popular education.

Acknowledgement

I am very grateful to Mrs Elisabeth Brewer, Mr Victor Watson and Dr Roger Matthews who took the time and trouble to read and criticize an earlier draft of this article. Such errors as remain are my own.

1. The first ed. of The Poetical Monitor is in the British Library; there is also a calf-bound edition in the Cambridge University Library.

2. The Dissenters had produced collections of hymns, though not for children, which were intended to succeed Watts’s hymnals. John Rippon’s A Selection of Hymns from the Best Authors, Intended as an Appendix to Dr Watts’s ‘Psalms and Hymns’ (1787) was the most successful, and A Collection of Hymns from Various Authors, Intended as a Supplement to Dr Watts (1784) by George Burder is another example. See J. R. Watson, The English Hymn: A critical and Historical study (Oxford, 1997), p. 266.

3. The earliest extant copy of A Sequel to the Poetical Monitor is the 2nd. ed. (1815) in (BL). The earliest reference to the Sequel is in the archives of the house of Longman: the commission ledger of 1812 for the Sequel sold in 1811. See Alison Ingram (comp.), The Archives of the House of Longman 1794-1914 [microfilm] (Cambridge, 1981), Commission Ledger 1807-1828.

4. See Ian Michael, The Teaching of English: From the Sixteenth Century to 1870 (Cambridge, 1987), p.477; Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, ser. II, phase I, 1816-1870 (Cambridge, 1990).

5. My historical account of the boys’ and girls’ schools at Shakespear’s Walk draws upon M. A. Bourne, ‘Shakespeare’s Walk Protestant Dissenters’ Charity School’, The Educational Record, vol. XVI, new ser. No. 10, February, 1902, pp.7-15; M.G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Purtanism in Action (London, 1964), pp.131, 372.

6. Charles James Longman, The House of Longman 1724-1800: A Bibliographical History with a List of Signs Used by Booksellers of That Period, ed. John E. Chandler (London, 1936), p.182.

7. See the archives mentioned in note 3.

8. See the catalogue mentioned in note 4.

9. Or 1705-88, see Michael, Teaching, p. 430.

10. Monitor, p. 40.

11. Isaac Watts, Divine Songs (Derby, n.d.), p. 68. ‘A Cradle Hymn’ is added to later editions of Divine Songs. See bibliography of Isaac Watts, Divine Songs (introd. and bibliog. J.H.P. Pafford) (Oxford, 1971).

12. Unknown, but possibly William Westley (dates unknown).

13. Monitor, p. 108.

14. Watts, Divine Songs (London, 1715), p.15.

15. Monitor, p.153.

16. Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (London, 1707; London, 1828), Book I, p. 54.

17. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, especially after Henry Primatt’s Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Animals (1776), the cause of humanity to animals became a distinctive concern for philanthropists. Sarah Trimmer’s History of the Robins (1786) is one of the best-known book addressed to children stressing avoidance of cruelty to animals. See John Passmore, ‘The Treatment of Animals’. Journal of the History of Ideas, 36, 1975, pp. 209-210.

18. See Ian Michael, Literature in School: A Guide to the Early Sources 1700 to 1830 (Swansea, 1999), p. 19.

19. See Table 8, "British School Anthologies, 1802-1870" in Michael, Teaching, pp. 224-235.

20. Sequel, pp. 44-45.

21. Watts, An Essay towards the Encouragement of Charity Schools (London, 1728), p. 12.

22. For a concise history of children’s hymns, see John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology: Setting Forth the Origin and History of Christian Hymns of All Ages and Nations, rev. ed. (London, 1907), pp. 221-222.

23. For hymns for children and the young in the nineteenth century, see Erik Routley, I’ll Praise My Maker: A Study of the Hymns of Certain Authors Who Stand in or Near the Tradition of English Calvinism (London, 1951), pp. 54-57.

24. Julian, p. 220.

25. For further discussion on school anthologies from 1771 to 1801, see Michael, Teaching, pp.185-199.

26. See David Vincent, "The Domestic and the Official Curriculum in Nineteenth-Century England" in Mary Hilton et al. (eds.), Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, Writing and Childhood 1600-1900 (London, 1997), pp. 172-173.

 

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