Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” and Thomas Day’s “Sanford and Merton” occupied the place in the estimation of boys that the doings of Mrs. Barbauld’s and Mrs. Trimmer’s works held in the opinion of the younger members of the nursery.  Edition followed upon edition of the adventures of the famous island hero.  In Philadelphia, in seventeen hundred and ninety-three, William Young issued what purported to be the sixth edition.  In New York many thousands of copies were sold, and in eighteen hundred and twenty-four we find a Spanish translation attesting its widespread favor.  In seventeen hundred and ninety-four, Isaiah Thomas placed the surprising adventures of the mariner as on the “Coast of America, lying near the mouth of the great river Oroonoque.”

Parents also thought very highly of Thomas Day’s “Children’s Miscellany” and “Sanford and Merton.”  To read this last book is to believe it to be possibly in the style that Dr. Samuel Johnson had in mind when he remarked to Mrs. Piozzi that “the parents buy the books but the children never read them.”  Yet the testimony of publishers of the past is that “Sanford and Merton” had a large and continuous sale for many years.  “‘Sanford and Merton,’” writes Mr. Julian Hawthorne, “ran ’Robinson Crusoe’ harder than any other work of the eighteenth century particularly written for children.”  “The work,” he adds, “is quaint and interesting rather to the historian than to the general, especially the child, reader.  Children would hardly appreciate so amazingly ancient a form of conversation as that which resulted from Tommy [the bad boy of the story] losing a ball and ordering a ragged boy to pick it up: 

“‘Bring my ball directly!’

“‘I don’t choose it,’ said the boy.

“‘Sirrah,’ cried Tommy, ‘if I come to you I will make you choose it.’

“‘Perhaps not, my pretty master,’ said the boy.

“‘You little rascal,’ said Tommy, who now began to be very angry, ’if I come over the hedge I will thrash you within an inch of your life.’”

The gist of Tommy’s threat has often been couched in modern language by grandsons of the boys from whom the Socratic Mr. Day wrote to expose the evils of too luxurious an education.  His method of compilation of facts to be taught may best be given in the words of his Preface:  “All who have been conversant in the education of very young children, have complained of the total want of proper books to be put in their hands, while they are taught the elements of reading....  The least exceptional passages of books that I could find for the purpose were ’Plutarch’s Lives’ and Xenophon’s ‘History of the Institution of Cyrus,’ in English translation; with some part of ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ and a few passages from Mr. Brooke’s ‘Fool of Quality.’ ...  I therefore resolved ... not only to collect all such stories as I thought adapted to the faculties of children, but to connect these by continued narration....  As to the histories