From the fact that these stories were written for the author’s own children, another book, composed less than a century before, is brought to mind. Comparison of even the meagre description of Mrs. Skyrin’s book with Cotton Mather’s professed purpose in “Good Lessons” shows the stride made in children’s literature to be a long one. Yet a quarter of a century was still to run before any other original writing was done in America for children’s benefit.
Nobody else in America, indeed, seems to have considered the question of writing for nursery inmates. Mrs. Barbauld’s “Easy Lessons for Children from Two to Five Years old,” written for English children, were considered perfectly adapted to gaining knowledge and perhaps amusement. It is true that when Benjamin Bache of Philadelphia issued “Easy Lessons,” he added this note: “Some alterations were thought necessary to be made in this ... American edition, to make it agree with the original design of rendering instruction easy and useful.... The climate and the familiar objects of this country suggested these alterations.” Except for the substitution of such words as “Wheat” for “Corn,” the intentions of the editor seem hardly to have had result, except by way of advertisement; and are of interest merely because they represent one step further in the direction of Americanizing the story-book literature.
All Mrs. Barbauld’s books were considered excellent for young children. As a “Dissenter,” she gained in the esteem of the people of the northern states, and her books were imported as well as reprinted here. Perhaps she was best known to our grandparents as the joint author, with Dr. Aikin, of “Evenings at Home,” and of “Hymns in Prose and Verse.” Both were read extensively for fifty years. The “Hymns” had an enormous circulation, and were often full of fine rhythm and undeserving of the entire neglect into which they have fallen. Of course, as the fashion changed in the “approved” type of story, Mrs. Barbauld suffered criticism. “Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth in their ‘Practical Education’ insisted that evil lurked behind the phrase in ‘Easy Lessons,’ ‘Charles wants his dinner’ because of the implication ‘that Charles must have whatever he desires,’ and to say ‘the sun has gone to bed,’ is to incur the odium of telling the child a falsehood.”[128-*]
But the manner in which these critics of Mrs. Barbauld thought they had improved upon her method of story-telling is a tale belonging to another chapter. When Miss Edgeworth’s wave of popularity reached this country Mrs. Barbauld’s ideas still flourished as very acceptable to parents.
A contemporary and rival writer for the English nursery was Mrs. Sarah Trimmer. Her works for little children were also credited with much information they did not give. After the publication of Mrs. Barbauld’s “Easy Lessons” (which was the result of her own teaching of an adopted child), Mrs. Trimmer’s friends urged her to make a like use of the lessons given to her family of six, and accordingly she published in seventeen hundred and seventy-eight an “Easy Introduction into the Knowledge of Nature,” and followed it some years after its initial success by “Fabulous Histories,” afterwards known as the “History of the Robins.” Although Mrs. Trimmer represents more nearly than Mrs. Barbauld the religious emotionalism pervading Sunday-school libraries,—in which she was deeply interested,—the work of both these ladies exemplifies the transitional stage to that Labor-in-Play school of writing which was to invade the American nursery in the next century when Parley and Abbott throve upon the proceeds of the educational narrative.
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.