After a few minutes' silence she answered, 'A cube.'
Edgeworth was careful to train not only the reasoning powers, but also the imaginative faculty of his children; he delighted in good poetry and fiction, and read aloud well, and his daughter writes: 'From the Arabian Tales to Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and the Greek tragedians, all were associated in the minds of his children with the delight of hearing passages from them first read by their father.'
He was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient classics—Homer and the Greek tragedians in particular. From the best translations of the ancient tragedies he selected for reading aloud the most striking passages, and Pope's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' he read several times to his family, in certain portions every day.
In his grief for his child, Edgeworth turned to his earliest friend, his sister, the favourite companion of his childhood, and from her he received all the consolation that affectionate sympathy could give; but, as he said, 'for real grief there is no sudden cure; all human resource is in time and occupation.'
It was about this time that Darwin published the now forgotten poem, 'The Botanic Garden,' and Edgeworth wrote to his friend expressing his admiration for it; but Maria adds: 'With as much sincerity as he gave praise, my father blamed and opposed whatever he thought was faulty in his friend's poem. Dr. Darwin had formed a false theory, that poetry is painting to the eye; this led him to confine his attention to the language of description, or to the representation of that which would produce good effect in picture. To this one mistaken opinion he sacrificed the more lasting and more extensive fame, which he might have ensured by exercising the powers he possessed of rousing the passions and pleasing the imagination.
'When my father found that it was in vain to combat a favourite false principle, he endeavoured to find a subject which should at once suit his friend's theory and his genius. He urged him to write a "Cabinet of Gems." The ancient gems would have afforded a subject eminently suited to his descriptive powers. . . . The description of Medea, and of some of the labours of Hercules, etc., which he has introduced into his "Botanic Garden," show how admirably he would have succeeded had he pursued this plan; and I cannot help regretting that the suggestions of his friend could not prevail upon him to quit for nobler objects his vegetable loves.'
Edgeworth's prediction has not yet come true, nor does it seem likely that it ever will, 'that in future times some critic will arise, who shall re-discover the "Botanic Garden,"' and build his fame upon this discovery.
Dr. Darwin did not follow his friend's advice, to choose a better subject for his next poem; nor did Edgeworth do what his friend wished, which was to publish a decade of inventions with neat maps.
In the education of his children, he had already learned the value of the observation of children's ways and mental states. Having found that Rousseau's system was imperfect, he was groping after some better method. His daughter writes: 'Long before he ever thought of writing or publishing, he had kept a register of observations and facts relative to his children. This he began in the year 1798. He and Mrs. Honora Edgeworth kept notes of every circumstance which occurred worth recording. Afterwards Mrs Elizabeth Edgeworth and he continued the same practice; and in consequence of his earnest exhortations, I began in 1791 or 1792 to note down anecdotes of the children whom he was then educating. Besides these, I often wrote for my own amusement and instruction some of his conversation-lessons, as we may call them, with his questions and explanations, and the answers of the children. . . . To all who ever reflected upon education it must have occurred that facts and experiments were wanting in this department of knowledge, while assertions and theories abounded. I claim for my father the merit of having been the first to recommend, both by example and precept, what Bacon would call the experimental method in education. If I were obliged to rest on any single point my father's credit as a lover of truth, and his utility as a philanthropist and as a philosophical writer, it should be on his having made this first record of experiments in education. … In noting anecdotes of children, the greatest care must be taken that the pupils should not know that any such register is kept. Want of care in this particular would totally defeat the object in view, and would lead to many and irremediable bad consequences, and would make the children affected and false, or would create a degree of embarrassment and constraint which must prevent the natural action of the understanding or the feelings. … In the registry of such observations, considered as contributing to a history of the human mind, nothing should be neglected as trivial. The circumstances which may seem most trifling to vulgar observers may be most valuable to the philosopher; they may throw light, for example, on the manner in which ideas and language are formed and generalised.'
Edgeworth and his daughter Maria brought out their joint work, Practical Education, in 1798. Maria adds: 'So commenced that literary partnership, which for so many years was the pride and joy of my life.' We who were born in the first half of the nineteenth century can remember the delight of reading about Frank and Rosamund, and Harry and Lucy, and feel a debt of gratitude to the writers who gave us so many pleasant hours.