Latin language -- Readers; Natural history -- Juvenile literature; Picture books for children
I. First it will afford a device for learning to read more easily than
hitherto, especially having a symbolical alphabet set before it, to wit,
the characters of the several letters, with the image of that creature,
whose voice that letter goeth about to imitate, pictur’d by it. For the
young _Abc_ scholar will easily remember the force of every character by
the very looking upon the creature, till the imagination being
strengthened by use, can readily afford all things; and then having
looked over a _table of the chief syllables_ also (which yet was not
thought necessary to be added to this book) he may proceed to the
viewing of the Pictures, and the inscriptions set over ’em. Where again
the very looking upon the thing pictured suggesting the name of the
thing, will tell him how the title of the picture is to be read. And
thus the whole book being gone over by the bare titles of the pictures,
reading cannot but be learned; and indeed too, which thing is to be
noted, without using any ordinary tedious spelling, that most
troublesome torture of wits, which may wholly be avoided by this method.
For the often reading over the Book, by those larger descriptions of
things, and which are set after the Pictures, will be able perfectly to
beget a habit of reading.
II. The same book being used in English, in English Schools, will serve
for the perfect learning of the whole English tongue, and that from the
bottom; because by the aforesaid descriptions of things, the words and
phrases of the whole language are found set orderly in their own places.
And a short English Grammar might be added at the end, clearly resolving
the speech already understood into its parts; shewing the declining of
the several words, and reducing those that are joined together under
certain rules.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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