Historical Collections Relating to Northamptonshire - new book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Notes on the Horn Book. Those early text-hooks, formerly used by children, and known by the name of " Horn Books," ore interesting from many points of view, aud a few notes on them may not bo unacceptable. These observations arc mainly taken, by permission, from the interesting " History of tho Horn Book," written by the late Mr. Andrew Tuer, F.H.A., the only book dealing with the matter. This gentleman, in October, 1892, issued a num- ber of post cards, curiosities in themselves, asking for information, and one of these cards I have. Some of the answers received were certainly amusing. Mr. Gladstone's reply to a request for information was most unexpected, but certainly to the point. He said that ho knew nothing about the matter. Probably this would be the only subject as to which hu would have returned such an answer. Another gentleman wrote to say, " I have hitherto thought that my horn book was the only one in existence, but now I find there are two?I have one and you have the other." Mr. Tuer, however, in his book notes about a hundred and fifty examples, so they are not quite so scarce as the worthy gentleman thought. Nevertheless, at the Caxton Exhihition, held in 1877, only four horn books were shown; and a few years later, when the Worshipful Company of Horners held a loan exhihition, and special efforts were taken to get together a large number of these books, only eight were shown. So, in any case, they are sufficiently rare. As long ago as 1809 horn books were collected, and ono, in the possession of Dr. Wright, of Wake- field, was received by his mother with the following lines: ? " Madam, a man of my acquaintance Was lately talking of the entrance Into all learning, and tho rules Now used in our modern schools. Says he, ' I think in fut...