His works, edited by A. H. Bullen, were printed at the Chiswick Press in 1881. The same editor included _The Maydes Metamorphosis_ in vol. i. of his _Collection of Old Plays_. _The Parliament of Bees_ and _Humour out of Breath_ were printed in _Nero and other Plays_ (Mermaid Series, 1888), with an introduction by Arthur Symons. An appreciation by Mr A. C. Swinburne appeared in _The Nineteenth Century_ (October 1897).
DAY, THOMAS (1748-1789), British author, was born in London on the 22nd of June 1748. He is famous as the writer of _Sandford and Merton_ (1783-1789), a book for the young, which, though quaintly didactic and often ridiculous, has had considerable educational value as inculcating manliness and independence. Day was educated at the Charterhouse and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a great admirer of J. J. Rousseau and his doctrine of the ideal state of nature. Having independent means he devoted himself to a life of study and philanthropy. His views on marriage were typical of the man. He brought up two foundlings, one of whom he hoped eventually to marry. They were educated on the severest principles, but neither acquired the high quality of stoicism which he had looked for. After several proposals of marriage to other ladies had been rejected, he married an heiress who agreed with his ascetic programme of life. He finally settled at Ottershaw in Surrey and took to farming on philanthropic principles. He had many curious and impracticable theories, among them one that all animals could be managed by kindness, and while riding an unbroken colt he was thrown near Wargrave and killed on the 28th of September 1789. His poem _The Dying Negro_, published in 1773, struck the keynote of the anti-slavery movement. It is also obvious from his other works, such as _The Devoted Legions_ (1776) and _The Desolation of America_ (1777), that he strongly sympathized with the Americans during their War of Independence.
DAY (O. Eng. _dæg_, Ger. _Tag_; according to the _New English Dictionary_, "in no way related to the Lat. _dies_"), in astronomy, the interval of time in which a revolution of the earth on its axis is performed. Days are distinguished as solar, sidereal or lunar, according as the revolution is taken relatively to the sun, the stars or the moon. The solar day is the fundamental unit of time, not only in daily life but in astronomical practice. In the latter case, being determined by observations of the sun, it is taken to begin with the passage of the mean sun over the meridian of the place, or at mean noon, while the civil day begins at midnight. A vigorous effort was made during the last fifteen years of the 19th century to bring the two uses into harmony by beginning the astronomical day at midnight. In some isolated cases this has been done; but the general consensus of astronomers has been against it, the day as used in astronomy being only a measure of time, and having no relation to the period of daily repose. The time when the day shall begin is purely a matter of convenience. The present practice being the dominant one from the time of Ptolemy until the present, it was felt that the confusion in the combination of past and present astronomical observations, and the doubts and difficulties in using the astronomical ephemerides, formed a decisive argument against any change.