ls from the pens of Richardson,
Fielding, and Smollett had begun to claim and to hold the attention of
the English reading public. The children, however, could neither
comprehend nor enjoy the witty criticism and subtle treatment of the
topics discussed by the older men, although, as will be seen in another
chapter, the novels became, in both the original and in the abridged
forms, the delight of many a "young master and miss." Meanwhile, in the
American colonies the people who could afford to buy books inherited
their taste for literature as well as for tea from the Puritans and
fashionables in the mother country; although it is a fact familiar to
all, that the works of the comparatively few native authors lagged, in
spirit and in style, far behind the writings of Englishmen of the time.

The reading of one who was a boy in the older era of the urbane Addison
and the witty Pope, and a man in the newer period of the novelists, is
well described in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. "All the little
money," wrote that book-lover, "that came into my hands was laid out in
books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my collection was of John
Bunyan's works in separate volumes. I afterwards sold them to buy R.
Burton's Historical Collections; they were Chapmen's books, and cheap,
40 or 50 in all."

Burton's "Historical Collections" contained history, travels,
adventures, fiction, natural history, and biography. So great was the
favor in which they were held in the eighteenth century that the
compiler, Nathaniel Crouch, almost lost his identity in his pseudonym,
and like the late Mr. Clemens, was better known by his nom-de-plume than
by his family name. According to Dunton, he "melted down the best of the
English histories into twelve-penny books, which are filled with
wonders, rarities and curiosities." Although characterized by Dr.
Johnson as "very proper to allure backward readers," the contents of
many of the various books afforded the knowledge and entertainment
eagerly grasped by Franklin and other future makers of the American
nation. The scarcity of historical works concerning the colonies made
Burton's account of the "English Empire in America" at once a mine of
interest to wide-awake boys of the day. Number VIII, entitled "Winter
Evenings' Entertainment," was long a source of amusement with its
stories and riddles, and its title was handed down to other books of a
similar nature. To children, however, the best-known