Letter LI

Summary

My dearest Mr. B.

I have been considering of your Commands, in relation to Mr. Locke's Book; and as you are pleas’d to give me Time to acquit myself of the Task, I shall take the Liberty to propose to include in a little Book my humble Sentiments, as I did to Lady Davers, in that I shew’d you in relation to the Plays I had seen. And, since you confine me not to Time or Place, perhaps, I shall be three or four Years in completing it, because I shall reserve some Subjects to my further Experience in Childrens Ways and Tempers, and in order to benefit myself by those good Lessons and Instructions, which I shall receive from your delightful Conversation, in that Compass of Time, if God spare us to one another: And then it will, moreover, be more worthy, than it can otherwise be, of the Perusal of the most honour’d and best-beloved of all my Correspondents, much honour’d and beloved, as they all are.

I must needs say, my dear Mr. B. that this is a Subject to which I was always particularly attentive; and among the Charities your bountiful Heart permits me to dispense to the Poor and Indigent, I have had always a watchful Eye upon the Children of such, and endeavour’d, by Questions put to them, as well as to their Parents, to inform myself of their little Ways and Tempers, and how Nature delights to work in different Minds, and how it might be pointed to their Good, according to their respective Capacities; and I have for this Purpose erected, with your Approbation, a little School of Seven or Eight Children, among which are Four in the earliest Stages, when they can but just speak, and call for what they want, or love: And I am not a little pleas’d to observe, when I visit them in their School-time, that Principles of Goodness and Virtue may be instill’d into their little Hearts much earlier than is usually imagin’d. And why should it not be so? For may not the Child, that can tell its Wants, and make known its Inclination, be easilymade sensible of yours, and what you expect from it, provided you take a proper Method?