His attention was then drawn to the want of suitable lesson-books for a Friends' school for girls in York, and in 1795 he published his "English Grammar." The manuscript petition from the teachers requesting him to prepare it has been preserved. The work became rapidly popular; it went through nearly fifty editions, was edited, abridged, simplified, and enlarged in England and America, and for a long time was used in schools to the exclusion of all other grammar-books. See History of English grammars.