Note 33 — III. THE OLD-FASHIONED LIBRARY

Mrs. Godwin [Mary Wollstonecraft] (1759–1797) began, as an exercise, to translate “The Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children,” written by the Reverend Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744–1811), who won no small renown for the excellence of his school, founded upon the principles set down by Rousseau. “The design of this book,” says the worthy master, “is to give birth to what we call a good disposition in children.” The chief delight of the 1782 edition, published in three volumes, are the copperplates which represent in the most graphic way, by pose, gesture, expression, and caption, all the ills that juvenile flesh is heir to. No one, after having once viewed the poor little figure seated on a most forbidding-looking sofa, can quite resist the pangs of sympathy over his exclamation: “How sad is life without a friend!” Life is indeed a direful wilderness of trials and vexations. The prismatic colors of one’s years shrivel up before such wickedness as is expressed by the picture “I hate you!” And yet how simple is the remedy for a boy’s bad disposition, according to the Reverend Mr. Salzmann! “Teach him,” so the philosopher argues in his preface, “that envy is the vexation which is felt at seeing the happiness of others: you will have given him a just idea of it; but shew him its dreadful effects, in the example of Hannah in chap. 29, vol. II, who was so tormented by this corroding passion, at her sister’s wedding, that she could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, and was so far carried away by it as to embitter her innocent sister’s pleasure; this representation has determined the child’s disposition—he will hate envy.” Elements of Morality ... Translated from the German.... 3d ed. (3 vols.) London, 1782.