ds 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.

"'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