ting them with the hand soothingly, chant to them these or similar lines:—
“Dearest baby, do not weep,
Shut your pretty eyes to sleep;
Go to bye bye, baby dear,
And forget your pain and fear,”[1]
8. In the third and fourth year some such rhymes may be beneficially taught; nurses, when playing with children, may sing to them, not only to prevent their crying, but also to fix them in the memories for future benefit; for example, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth years it will increase the knowledge of poetry by committing to memory pious little verses; of this, however, I afterwards treat among the exercises of piety in the tenth chapter. Although they may not at this time understand what rhythm or verse is, yet by use they learn to note a certain difference between measured language and prose; nay, when in due time everything shall be explained in the schools, it will afford them pleasure to find that they had previously learned something which they now understand the better. Childish poetry, therefore, consists in their knowing some rhymes and verses; for children can understand what is rhythm and poetry, and what is plain speech. So far, then, should they study their own language, and in its various degrees of progress be exercised during the first six years.[2]
- ↑ In Heart of Oak, Book I., edited by Professor Charles Eliot Norton, and published by D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, mothers and teachers will find many well-selected rhymes especially suitable for this early period of childhood.
- ↑ As already noted, Comenius was at variance with the schoolmasters of the Renaissance, who substituted Latin from the first for the mother-tongue. Against this practice he protested vigorously. Mulcaster in England and Ratich in Germany had previously made similar
