lowering her standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard". For example, Lessons had a "catalytic effect" on Sarah Trimmer; as Samuel F. Pickering, Jr. states, "[A]fter reading them, she wrote her An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature and Reading the Holy Scriptures (1780), as in part a continuation of the Lessons for older children and thus began her distinguished career as a practical educator and writer of books for children". Lessons also influenced Trimmer and Hannah Moore's work with the charity and Sunday schools that taught working-class children how to read during much of the 18th century. Ann and Jane Taylor began writing children's poetry, the most famous of which is "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Ellenor Fenn wrote and designed a series of readers and games for middle-class children, including the best-selling Cobwebs to Catch Flies (1784). Richard Lovell Edgeworth began one of the first systematic studies of childhood development which would culminate not only in an educational treatise co-authored with Maria Edgeworth entitled Practical Education (1798), but also in a large body of children's stories by Maria, beginning with The Parent's Assistant (1798). Thomas Day originally began his important The History of Sandford and Merton (1783–89) for Edgeworth's collection, but it grew too long and was published separately. In the second half of the 1790s, Barbauld and her brother, the physician John Aikin, wrote a second series of books, Evenings at Home, aimed at more advanced readers, ages eight to twelve. While not as influential, they were also popular and remained in print for decades. Lessons was reprinted, translated, pirated, and imitated until the 20th century; according to Myers, it helped found a female tradition of educational writing. While Day, for example, has been hailed as an educational innovator, Barbauld has most often been described through the unsympathetic words of her detractors. The politician Charles James Fox and the writer and critic Samuel Johnson ridiculed Barbauld's children's books and believed that she was wasting her poetic talents. In his Life of Johnson (1791), James Boswell recorded Johnson's thoughts: Romantic essayist Charles Lamb, in a letter to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge criticised Barbauld in this way, which scholar Mitzi Myers calls "a quotable but very dubious assessment": This quote was used by writers and scholars to condemn Barbauld and other educational writers for a century. Myers, however, calls Lamb's