DAY, THOMAS, was born at London iu 1748. His father held a place in the Customhouse, and died when Thomas was a year old, leaving him a fortune of 1200/. a year. He received his school educa tion at the Charterhouse, and at the age of sixteen was entered a gentleman commoner of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he remained for three years, but left without taking a degree. He then spent some summers in travelling through and residing in France and other parts of the continent. He had already adopted certain strong and peculiar opinions on the subject of education, bolding apparently on the one hand that the common mode of education was wholly vicious, and on the other, that by a proper education there was scarcely anything that might not be accomplished. About the year 1769 he proceeded to put his theories to the test of a bold experiment, by selecting from the foundling hospital at Shrewsbury two girls of twelve years of age, with the design of rearing them according to his own notions, and then making one of them his wife ; and although this speculation failed in the main point, its eccentric author never having married either of his iarotegdes, both the girls, with the portions he gave them, obtained husbands, and by the propriety of their con duct through life did honour to his training. In 1778 Mr. Day married Miss Mines, of Yorkshire, a lady similar to himself in her tastes and opinions, and having a fortune as large as his own. The following year he was called to the bar ; but he never practised. Meanwhile in 1773 he had made his first appearance as an author, in conjunction with his friend Mr. Bicknell, in n poem entitled The Dying Negro,' a production which is said to have had a considerable share in exciting the public feeling against the atrocities of the slave-trade.
In 1776 he published another poem, called The Devoted Legions,' being an attack upon the American War. It was followed the next year by another on the same subject, entitled The Desolation of America.' After this he published several political pamphlets in prose ; namely, in 1784, 'The Letters of Marius ; or Reflections upon the Peace, the East India Bill, and the Present Crisis,' and 'A Frag ment of a Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes' (in the United States) ; in 1785, A Dialogue between a Justice of Peace and a Farmer ; ' and in 1788, 'A Latter to Arthur Young, Esq., on the Bill to prevent the Exportation of Wool.' In 1783 appeared the first volume of the work by which he is now principally remembered, his History of Sandford and Merton ;' the second volume was published in 1786, and the third in 1789. The object of this fiction is to illustrate and recommend the views of the author on education and on human nature generally ; and it is a good picture of both his intellectual and his moral character. Its freshness and vigour, and the strain of disinterestedness and philanthropy that pervades it, have a charm, especially for the young; but the narrowness of the writer's views makes it useless for any practical purpose, and nearly equally valueless as a piece of philosophy. Day is also the author of a shorter work of fiction, called The History of Little Jack.' He was killed 28th of September 1789, by a kick from a young horse, which he was training upon some new principle.