_works_, as he calls them? I think in a letter from you it would have
great weight. He is never idle, and he is even uncommonly persevering
for a child of his age; but he often spoils a good beginning by not
taking the trouble to think, and concluding in a hurry."

The first of these sets was imitated in style from Miss Edgeworth; he
called it, "Harry and Lucy Concluded; or, Early Lessons." Didactic he
was from the beginning. It was to be in four volumes, uniform in red
leather, with proper title, frontispiece, and "copper-plates," "printed
and composed by a little boy, and also drawn." It was begun in 1826, and
continued at intervals until 1829. It was all done laboriously in
imitation of print, and, to complete the illusion, contained a page of
errata. This great work was, of course, never completed, though he
laboured through three volumes; but when he tired of it, he would turn
his book upside down, and begin at the other end with other matters; so
that the red books contain all sorts of notes on his minerals and
travels, reports of sermons, and miscellaneous information, besides
their professed contents; in this respect also being very like his later
works.

There you have our author ready made, with his ever-fresh interest in
everything, and all-attempting eagerness, out of which the first thing
that crystallizes into any definite shape is the verse-writing.




CHAPTER III

PERFERVIDUM INGENIUM (1826-1830)