NEW ENGLAND PRIMER, TuE. One of the most famous school-books in the history of education. Yet it is it first ap peared, and of the 2,000,000 copies that it is reasonable to suppose were printed and sold in the eighteenth century, less than 50 survive, rep resenting, however. some forty editions. Much has been done to clear up the bibliography of the work by Paul Leicester Fo•d in The New England Primer: A History of Its Origin and Derelopment, with a Reprint of the Unique Copy of (lie Earliest Edition, and Many Fac simile Illustrations and Reproductions (New York. 1897). The compiler of the work was shown by Ford to have been Benjamin Harris, all English printer and rhymester, who during the Catholicizing reign of James IT. came to Boston and set up a book, coffee. tea, and choco late shop 'by the Town Pump near the 'Change.' Ilere some time before 1690 he first issued the Primer, an abridgment of another compilation, The Protestant Tutor. A fragment of this first edition, or of a second, soon after, was found used as waste in the binding of a book printed in 1688, and is known as "The Bradford Frag ment." The Primer was changed from time to time to suit not only religious, but political feel ing, though in general through the eighteenth century the tendency was strongly religious. The
most familiar quotation from the Yew England Primer is doubtless the nursery prayer, "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep." but many couplets from the rhymed alphabet are still remembered. The eomposition of the different editions varies greatly. The earliest is thus made np: (1) Title; (2) Godly Admonitions; (3) Alphabet and Syl labary; (4) Rhymed Alphabet: (5) The Dutiful Child's Promises; (6) An Alphabet of Lessons, Texts of Scripture; (7) Choice Sentences: (8) The Lord's Prayer. Creed, and Ten Command ments; (9) The Duty of Children. (10) Hortatory Verses; (II) Names in Order of Bibli cal Books; (12) Roman and Arabic Numerals, from 1 to 100; (13) John Rogers's Exhortation to His Children; (14) The Shorter Catechism. The more noteworthy features of other editions are: John Cotton's "Spiritual Milk for American Babes," a still shorter catechism, and a "Dia logue Between Christ, Youth, and the Devil."