Born, in London, 22 June, 1748. Succeeded to family estate of Bear Hill, Berkshire, July, 1749. Mother removed with him to Stoke Newington; soon afterwards married again, and settled at Bear Hill, 1755. At school at Stoke Newington, and at Charterhouse, 1755–63. Matriculated Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1 June, 1764; left, without degree, 1766. Admitted to Middle Temple, 12 Feb. 1765; called to Bar, 14 May, 1775; never practised. After disappointments in love, endeavoured to train two orphan girls on his own principles, in order that he might marry one of them. Scheme failed. Visit to France. On return, after other love disappointments, settled in London; engaged in literary work, with occasional travelling. Married Esther Milnes, 7 Aug. 1778; spent the winter in Hampstead. Bought house at Abridge, Essex, 1779. Removed to Anningsley, Surrey, 1781. Life of great seclusion and asceticism. Killed by accident on horseback, 28 Sept. 1789. Buried at Wargrave. Works: “The Dying Negro” (anon., with J. Bicknell), 1773; “Ode for the New Year” (anon.), 1776; “The Devoted Legions,” 1776; “The Desolation of America” (anon.), 1777; “Two Speeches,” 1780; “Reflexions on the Present State of England,” 1782 (2nd edn. same year); “Letters of Marius,” 1784; “Fragments of Original Letters on the Slavery of Negroes,” 1784; “Dialogue between a Justice of the Peace and a Farmer,” 1785; “Four Tracts,” 1785; “Letter to Arthur Young,” 1788; “History of Little Jack,” 1788; “History of Sandford and Merton” (anon.), vol. i., 1783; vol. ii., 1787; vol. iii., 1789. Life: by J. Keir, 1791; by Blackman, 1862.

Personal

  In memory of Thomas Day, Esq., who died the 28th September, 1789, aged 41, after having promoted by the energy of his writings and encouraged by the uniformity of his example the unremitted exercise of every public and private virtue.

  Edgeworth calls Day the “most virtuous human being” he had ever known. His friend and biographer Keir speaks with equal warmth. His amusing eccentricities were indeed only the symptoms of a real nobility of character, too deeply in earnest to submit to the ordinary compromises of society.

  Mr. Keir tells us that Day was tall, strong, erect, and of a manly deportment, deeply marked with small-pox; voice clear, expressive, and fit for public elocution. Mrs. Ritchie says: “He was tall and stooped in the shoulders, full made but not corpulent, and in his meditations and melancholy airs a degree of awkwardness and dignity were blended.” He talked like a book and always thought in the same full dress style, which must have rendered his society rather oppressive, and even Mr. Keir confesses that in conversation he entered into the subject more deeply and fully than was agreeable to the fashionable tone of the day. The picture of him by Wright, of Derby, shows him as a man with a heavy jaw, dark and abundant hair—in the original, the lightning is depicted as passing through it—nor does it seem that he paid that attention to his personal appearance that would be expected of a society author in these days. Mr. Edgeworth says of him, that at the very commencement of their acquaintance, when the Days were living at Bear Hill, in Berkshire, “His appearance was not prepossessing! He seldom combed his raven locks, though he was remarkably fond of washing in a stream.”

Sandford and Merton, 1783–89

  Altogether “Sandford and Merton” affected me the wrong way; and for the first time my soul revolted from the pretentious virtues of honest poverty. It is to the malign influence of that tale that I owe my sneaking preference for the drones and butterflies of earth. I do not now believe that men are born equal; I do not love universal suffrage; I mistrust all popular agitators, all intrusive legislation, all philanthropic fads, all friends of the people and benefactors of their race. I cannot even sympathize with the noble theory that every man and woman should do their share of the world’s work; I would gladly shirk my own if I could. And this lamentable, unworthy view of life and its responsibilities is due to the subtle poison instilled into my youthful mind by the too strenuous counter-teaching of “Sandford and Merton.”

General

  Utility rather than display of talent was the motive of his writing.

  He is one of our best composers in that style of antithetic and declamatory couplets which we learned from the French. The resolute enemy of political bondage, he put on without reluctance the closest shackles of the poet. Disdaining to torture his looks in conformity with the reigning fashion, he curled up his verses so as to adapt them to most arbitrary modes. The difference between the stiff couplet measure, as it is formed on the French model, and that looser disposition of it, which was practised by our elder writers, and which we have lately seen restored, reminds one of the comparison which the historian makes between the Macedonian armies and the Roman. “In each the soldier was stationary, preserving his ranks; the phalanx of the former was immovable, and of but one kind; the Roman force more distinct, consisting of several parts; and easily disposable for the purposes either of separation or of junction.” Of his three poems in this style, “The Dying Negro,” “The Devoted Legions,” and “The Desolation of America,” the second (“The Devoted Legions”) is the best. It is a satire against our national degeneracy and the supposed avarice which made us engage in the American war, conveyed under a description of the Parthian expedition setting out under Crassus, and the prophecy of its ruin. There was something novel in the design, and it is executed with extraordinary vigour.