“‘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 themselves, I have used the most unbounded licence.... As to the language, I have endeavored to throw into it a greater degree of elegance and ornament than is usually to be met with in such compositions; preserving at the same time a sufficient degree of simplicity to make it intelligible to very young children, and rather choosing to be diffuse than obscure.” With these objects in mind, we can understand small Tommy’s embellishment of his demand for the return of his ball by addressing the ragged urchin as “Sirrah.”
Mr. Day’s “Children’s Miscellany” contained a number of stories, of which one, “The History of Little Jack,” about a lost child who was adopted by a goat, was popular enough to be afterwards published separately. It is a debatable question as to whether the parents or the children figuring in this “Miscellany” were the more artificial. “Proud and unfeeling girl,” says one tender mother to her little daughter who had bestowed half her pin money upon a poor family,—“proud and unfeeling girl, to prefer vain and trifling ornaments to the delight of relieving the sick and miserable! Retire from my presence! Take away with you trinket and nosegay, and receive from them all the comforts they are able to bestow!” Why Mr. Day’s stories met with such unqualified praise at the time they were published, this example of canting rubbish does not reveal. In real life parents certainly did retain some of their substance for their own pleasure; why, therefore, discipline a child for following the same inclination?
In contrast to Mr. Day’s method, Mrs. Barbauld’s plan of simple conversation in words of one, two, and three syllables seems modern. Both aimed to afford pleasure to children “learning the elements of reading.” Where Mrs. Barbauld probably judged truly the capacity of young children in the dialogues with the little Charles of “Easy Lessons,” Mr. Day loaded his gun with flowers of rhetoric and overshot infant comprehension.
Nevertheless, in spite of the criticism that has waylaid and torn to tatters Thomas Day’s efforts to provide a suitable and edifying variety of stories, his method still stands for the distinct secularization of children’s literature of amusement. Moreover, as Mr. Montrose J. Moses writes in his delightful study of “Children’s Books and Reading,” “he foreshadowed the method of retelling incidents from the classics and from standard history and travel,—a form which is practised to a great extent by our present writers, who thread diverse materials on a slender wire of subsidiary story, and who, like Butterworth and Knox, invent untiring families of travellers who go to foreign parts, who see things, and then talk out loud about them.”
Besides tales by English authors, there was a French woman, Madame de Genlis, whose books many educated people regarded as particularly suitable for their daughters, both in the original text and in the English translations. In Aaron Burr’s letters we find references to his interest in the progress made by his little daughter, Theodosia, in her studies. His zeal in searching for helpful books was typical of the care many others took to place the best literature within their children’s reach. From Theodosia’s own letters to her father we learn that she was a studious child, who wrote and ciphered from five to eight every morning and during the same hours every evening. To improve her French, Mr. Burr took pains to find reading-matter when his law practice necessitated frequent absence from home. Thus from West Chester, in seventeen hundred and ninety-six, when Theodosia was nine years old, he wrote:
I rose up suddenly from the sofa and rubbing my head—“What book shall I buy for her?” said I to myself. “She reads so much and so rapidly that it is not easy to find proper and amusing French books for her; and yet I am so flattered with her progress in that language, that I am resolved that she shall, at all events, be gratified.” So ... I took my hat and sallied out. It was not my first attempt. I went into one bookseller’s after another. I found plenty of fairy tales and such nonsense, for the generality of children of nine or ten years old. “These,” said I, “will never do. Her understanding begins to be above such things.” ... I began to be discouraged. “But I will search a little longer.” I persevered. At last I found it. I found the very thing I sought. It is contained in two volumes, octavo, handsomely bound, and with prints and reprints. It is a work of fancy but replete with instruction and amusement. I must present it with my own hand.
Yr. affectionate