"PRACTICAL EDUCATION."--CHILDREN'S BOOKS.
Two circumstances must never be lost sight of in speaking of Miss
Edgeworth's writings: the one, that she did not write from the inner
prompting of genius, but rather because it had been suggested by her
father; the other, that she wrote throughout with a purpose in view, and
by no means only for the sake of affording amusement. To blame her,
therefore, as has been so often done, for being utilitarian in her aim,
is to blame her for having attained her goal. A minor consideration, but
one that often proves of no minor weight, was the fact that Miss
Edgeworth never needed to follow authorship as a profession; its
pecuniary results were of no moment to her, and hence she was spared all
the bitterness and incidental anxieties of an author's life, the working
when the brain should rest, the imperative need to go on, no matter
whether there be aught to say or not. Her path, in this respect, as in
all others, traversed the high-roads of life. Fame at once succeeded
effort; the heart-sickness of hope deferred was never hers; she was
therefore neither soured nor embittered by feeling within herself powers
which the world was unwilling or slow to acknowledge.
It was in 1798 that were published two large octavo volumes, called
_Practical Education_, bearing upon the title-page the joint names of
Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth. This was the first partnership work
of father and daughter, that literary partnership "which for so many
years," says Miss Edgeworth, "was the joy and pride of my life." The
book was the outcome of a series of observations and facts relative to
children, not originally intended for publication, registered first by
Mr. Edgeworth and his wife Honora, and afterwards continued by Mrs.
Elizabeth Edgeworth. In consequence of Mr. Edgeworth's exhortations,
Miss Edgeworth also began in 1791 to note down anecdotes of the children
around her, and to write out some of her father's conversation lessons.
The reason for giving all this to the world was that though assertions
and theories on education abounded, facts and experiments were wanting.
Undaunted by the fear of ridicule or the imputation of egotism, Mr.
Edgeworth bade his daughter work the raw materials into shape, blending
with anecdotes and lessons the principles of education that were
peculiarly his. For this work Miss Edgeworth claims for her father the
merit of having been the first to recommend, both by practice and
precept, what Bacon called the experimental method in education. Mr.
Edgeworth, as we know, was a disciple of the crude, mechanical school of
Rousseau; and though, owing to his failure with his eldest son, he had
seen the necessity of some modification, he had never wholly abandoned
it, and had imbued his daughter with the same ideas. Happily for her,
however, her earliest training had been less rigid than that of her
brothers and sisters. She thus obtained elbow-room for that development
which her father's formal and overloading system might have crushed. But
of this she was unconscious, and she was ready to echo his opinions,
believe in them blindly and propagate them.
The book, though prolix, dull and prosy in part, containing much
repetition, many paltry illustrations, many passages, such as the
chapter on servants, that might be omitted with advantage, was, as a
whole, of value, and would not even now be quite out of date. But its
chief and abiding merit is that it was a step in the right direction;
and its worth must on that account be emphasized, although this was
exaggerated by Miss Edgeworth's filial fondness. There were in those
days no text-books for the first principles of knowledge for the young;
and though education had been a favorite theme with all the
philosophers, from Aristotle to Locke, their systems were too remote for
practical application. The inevitable but lamentable consequence was,
that theories of education were disregarded just by those very persons
who had the training of the young in their hands. They were pleased to
sneer at them as metaphysics. So much space was given in works of this
nature to speculation, so little to practical application of proved and
admitted truths, that the mere word metaphysics sounded to the majority
of readers as a name denoting something perplexing and profound, but
useless as a whole. Yet, as Miss Edgeworth pertinently observed in her
preface to _Harry and Lucy_, after being too much the fashion,
metaphysics had been thrown aside too disdainfully, and their use and
abuse confounded. Without an attentive examination of the operations of
the mind, especially as developed at an early age, every attempt at
systematic education is mere working at random. The great merit of Mr.
and Miss Edgeworth's works may be stated in her own words:--
Surely it would be doing good service to bring into popular form
all that metaphysicians have discovered which can be applied to
practice in education. This was early and long my father's object.
The art of teaching to invent--I dare not say, but of awakening and
assisting the inventive power by daily exercise and excitement, and
by the application of philosophic principles to trivial
occurrences,--he believed might be pursued with infinite advantage
to the rising generation.
The authors of _Practical Education_ did not seek to appeal to grave and
learned persons, like the former writers on these themes, but to the
bulk of mankind, in whose hands, after all, lies their application. In
this series of somewhat rambling essays, of the most miscellaneous
description, there are no abstruse or learned disquisitions, there is
nothing like a process of reasoning from beginning to end; it is
essentially a treatise for the mass. On every page there are remarks for
which previous authorities can be found; original ideas are rare;
nevertheless the whole is expressed so lucidly and familiarly, the
entire work is so crowded with illustrations of the simplest and most
obvious kind, that "the unwary reader can easily be entrapped into the
belief that he is perusing nothing more serious than a lively and
agreeable essay upon the tempers and capacities of children, written by
two good-natured persons who are fond of amusing themselves with young
people." Mr. Edgeworth believed according to the proverb, "that youth
and white paper can take all impressions," that everything could be
achieved by education; that, given the individual, it was possible to
make of him whatever the instructor pleased. Of course our present more
scientific mode of thought, our superior scientific knowledge, shows us
the untenability of so dogmatic a persuasion; but it was characteristic
of the eighteenth century, forms the key-note to many of their
educational experiments, and furnishes the reason of their failures. The
times when Mr. Edgeworth wrote and devised his doctrines were "the good
old days when George the Third was King," when education was at a
discount, when to have a taste for literature was to be held a pedant or
a prig. If Mr. Edgeworth went too far in his earnest advocacy of careful
training for the young of both sexes, in his belief in the result, our
modern school has perhaps, in the latter respect, erred on the other
side. We know now that it is out of the power of education to change
nature. Yet our scientific knowledge has inclined us, perhaps unduly, to
under-rate the value of training, and to allow too much play to the
doctrine of _laissez-faire_. As ever, the truth lies in the middle; and
in any case, because we are at present going through a period of
reaction, we should refrain from sneering at those perhaps over-earnest
men, of whom Mr. Edgeworth was a type, who, in a frivolous age, rebelled
against their unthinking contemporaries. It is too much the fashion to
stigmatize these men as prigs; pragmatic no doubt they were, conceited
and self-confident, and, like all minorities, over-ardent. Still it
cannot be enough borne in mind that the people of that period who
thought, thought more and read more thoroughly than those of to-day.
They came to original conclusions; they did not imbibe so much at
second-hand by means of criticism and ready-made opinions. Of this, Miss
Edgeworth and her father were notable examples; to this, her letters
bear abundant testimony.
In the preface to _Practical Education_ the respective shares of father
and daughter in the work are stated. He wrote all relating to the art of
teaching in the chapter on tasks, grammar, classical literature,
geography, chronology, arithmetic and mechanics; the rest, considerably
more than half, was by her.
"The firm of Edgeworth & Co.," as Sydney Smith named them, had now
attained literary notoriety. Their book, on its appearance, was praised
and abused enough to render its authors speedily famous. Mr. Edgeworth,
with his enormous family, had, of course, had good opportunities of
observation and experiment in the domain of education. It was conceded
that there was much that was wise and useful in his pages, mixed with
much that was absurd and dogmatic. But the real life and animation for
his tenets was to come from his daughter, who was to carry them further
than they would undoubtedly otherwise have gone, and the fact that quite
two generations of English men and women were instilled into
Edgeworthian doctrines is due entirely and alone to her. She made it the
business of her life to illustrate the pedantic maxims of her father,
and it has been ably remarked that between these narrow banks her genius
flowed through many and diverse volumes of amusing tales. It was with
this aim in view that _The Parent's Assistant_, _Harry and Lucy_, _Frank
and Rosamond_, and _Early Lessons_, those companions of the nursery,
were penned. Though not all published at this time--the continuation of
_Harry and Lucy_ not, indeed, until many years later--it is convenient
to treat of them all together, as they are one in unity of thought and
design.
Fully to estimate what Miss Edgeworth did for the children of her time,
and that immediately succeeding it, it is needful to point out the wide
contrast between those days and ours. To-day the best authors do not
think it beneath their dignity to write for children--quite otherwise;
while formerly few persons of any literary ability condescended to write
children's books. In those days, therefore, nursery libraries were not,
as now, richly stocked, and children either did not read at all, or, if
they were of a reading disposition, read the works intended for their
elders, often, it must be admitted, with the good result that a solid
foundation of knowledge of the English classics was laid. Still it was
only exceptional children who attempted these tougher tasks; most either
did not read at all or read such poor literature as was at hand. In a
series of able articles published some years ago, Miss Yonge has traced
the history of children's books. For a long time there were no such
things; then came some tales translated from the French and judiciously
trimmed, besides a few original stories of more or less merit, to which
latter category belonged _Goody Two-Shoes_. This was followed by the
reign of didactic works which began with Mrs. Trimmer, whose original
impulse came from Rousseau. It was his _Emile_ that had aroused the
school which produced Madame de Genlis in France, Campe in Germany, and
in England the Aikens, Hannah More, the Taylors of Norwich, and Mr.
Day. It was a famine that had to be met, and much stodgy food was
devoured, many long, hard words were laboriously spelt out, the pabulum
offered was but too often dull and dreary. Realism had invaded the
nursery, strong, high purpose was the first aim in view, and
entertainment was held a secondary consideration. As for the poor dear
fairies, they had been placed under a ban by the followers of Jean
Jacques. Fairy tales were treated as the novels of childhood, and held
by this school to cultivate the heart and imagination unduly, and to
arouse disgust with the assigned lot in life, which is rarely romantic,
but consists rather of common-place pleasure and pain.
The Edgeworths' ambition was to write the history of realities in an
entertaining manner; they held that it was better for purposes of
education, and more suited to the tastes of children, than improbable
fiction. The first proposition may, perhaps, be conceded, the second
scarcely. In any case, however, Mr. Edgeworth, who had a special leaning
to the _jejune_, had a particular dislike to this form of fiction.
"Why," he asked, "should the mind be filled with fantastic visions? Why
should so much valuable time be lost? Why should we vitiate their taste
and spoil their appetite by suffering them to feed upon sweetmeats?"
Even poetical allusions, he thought, should be avoided in books for
children. On the other hand, with the happy intuition he often
displayed, he recognized that the current children's books of his time
erred in introducing too much that was purely didactic, too many general
reflections. He urged his daughter to avoid these errors, to bear action
in view, and that whether in morals or in science, the thing to be
taught should seem to arise from the circumstances in which the little
persons of the drama were placed. He saw that in order to prevent
precepts from tiring the eye and mind, it was necessary to make the
stories in which they were introduced dramatic, to keep alive hope, fear
and curiosity by some degree of intricacy.
Admirably did his daughter carry out the precepts he thus laid down. It
was Miss Edgeworth who really inaugurated for England the reign of
didactic fiction. Though never losing sight of her aim, she also never
lost sight of the amusement of her young readers. She rightly
comprehended that only by captivating their senses could she conquer and
influence their reason. Her children's tales, written with motion and
spirit, were told in the simple language of the young. She went straight
to the hearts of her little readers because they could understand her;
they needed no grown person to explain to them sesquipedalian words.
There is a freshness about her stories that children are quick to
respond to, and it arises from the fact that the children she depicts
for her readers are real. Miss Edgeworth knew what children were like;
she saw them not only from without but from within; she had lived all
her life among little people. Their world never became a paradise from
which she was shut out. The advantages she thus enjoyed were as rare as
they are important for the due comprehension of the needs of childhood,
and she utilized them to the utmost. The chief charm of her tales, that
which makes them _sui generis_ both now and then, is that she not only
wrote in the language of children, but, what is even rarer, from the
child's point of view.
There are yet among us those who owe their earliest pleasures to Miss
Edgeworth, and if of late she has been somewhat jostled out of the
nursery and school-room because it is the tendency of the modern child
to revolt against all attempts to teach it unawares, we are far from
sure that the change is wholly for the better. It was a just perception
of this that caused Miss Yonge to say in _The Stokesley Secret_ that her
heroes "would read any books that made no pretensions to be instructive,
but even a fact about a lion or an elephant made them detect wisdom in
disguise, and throw it aside." The modern child finds, it is said, Miss
Edgeworth's tales dry; American books of a semi-novelistic character,
rattling stories of wild adventure, are preferred.
This may be so, but we cannot help thinking that, just in these days,
when the ethical standard held up to children is not too high, a
judicious admixture of these works with Miss Edgeworth's high-minded
stories, inculcating self-sacrifice, unselfishness, obedience, and other
neglected virtues, might be of great advantage. There are sundry of Miss
Edgeworth's children's tales that are truly engrossing, veritable
masterpieces of style and execution. Who is there, no matter how
advanced his age, who cannot read with pleasure the tales of _Lazy
Lawrence_, _Tarlton_, _The Bracelets_, _Waste Not Want Not_, _Forgive
and Forget_, _e tutti quanti_? Who is there whom it much disturbs that
the account of Eton Montem is not accurate, and that perhaps there could
have been nothing more unfortunate than to lay the scene of action of
_The Little Merchants_ in Naples, the one spot in all the earth where
the events therein described could not have happened? Change the name of
the locality, the charm of the tale remains and the absurdity is
removed. Nor must it be forgotten that children, less well read than
their elders, are less alive to these blemishes, which are, after all,
of no real import. Of _Simple Susan_, so great a person as Sir Walter
Scott said that "when the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl,
there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry." Then as to
_Rosamond_, who does not feel a true affection for that impetuous,
impulsive little girl, and who is there (so greatly have our ideas of
morality changed) that does not think that in the matter of the famous
_Purple Jar_, an unjustifiable trick was played upon her by her mother?
It was a part of the Edgeworth system to make misdirected or mistaken
desires stultify themselves; but the child should have been informed of
the nature of the jar, and if then she still persisted in her choice,
she would have been fairly treated, which now she is not. _Frank_
remains a capital book for little people, and if, occasionally, Miss
Edgeworth's juvenile tales reflect too much of the stiff wisdom of her
age, these are matters which children, not morally _blase_, hardly
remark. On the other hand, there is never anything mawkish in her pages,
she never fills the mind with yearnings for the impossible, she never
works too much upon the susceptibilities, which modern child-literature
so often does. Her writings for children are certainly _sui generis_,
not because she has attempted what has never been attempted before, but
because she succeeded where others failed. She made even her youngest
reader comprehend that virtue is its own reward, while avoiding the
error invariably fallen into by writers for the young, of representing
virtues as always triumphant, vice as uniformly punished--a fallacy even
children are quick to detect. It has been objected to her that she
checks enthusiasm, the source of some of the noblest actions of mankind.
This is true; she has somewhat erred on the repressive side, but her
purpose was right and good. She saw plainly that enthusiasm, generous in
its origin, is but too often the source of misfortune, ill-judged
effort, and consequent disappointment. Moderation, the duties of
contentment and industry, are what she loves to uphold; the lower,
humbler, but no less effective virtues of existence.
On the other hand it is clear, from her letters, that she herself was
not devoid of enthusiasm, and here, again, it was probably her father's
influence that made her exclude it from her writings. In one of her
letters she says:--
_Vive l'enthousiasme!_ Without it characters may be very snug and
comfortable in the world, but there is a degree of happiness which
they will never taste, and of which they have no more idea than an
oyster can have.
_Harry and Lucy_ falls sharply into two parts. The earlier portion was
intended to be read before _Rosamond_, and after _Frank_; the latter was
the last of the juvenile series. The work had been begun by Mr.
Edgeworth and his wife Honora, from the need of a book to follow Mrs.
Barbauld's lessons, and as a story to be inserted in this work Mr. Day
had originally written _Sandford and Merton_. _Harry and Lucy_ was
printed, but not published. It was kept, as originally meant, only for
the Edgeworth children; but after more than twenty years Mr. Edgeworth
passed the work on to his daughter, and bade her complete it and prepare
it for publication. The first portion thus came out early in the
century, while the last part did not appear till 1825.
_Harry and Lucy_ is unquestionably heavy in parts, especially the latter
half, yet first principles are well explained and popularized, and
instruction and tale so skillfully blended that the young reader cannot
skip the one and read the other. The main idea and the chief merit of
these volumes, not at once perhaps obvious, is that of enforcing in a
popular form the necessity of exercising the faculties of children, so
that they should be, in part, their own instructors, and of adding to
those more common incentives to study, which consist of rewards and
punishments, the far surer, nobler and more effective stimulus of
curiosity kept alive by variety and the pleasure of successful
invention. It was the desire of the authors to show with what ease the
faculty of thinking may be cultivated in children, a point on which Miss
Edgeworth insists in other of her tales. In _Harry and Lucy_ are
explained simply and familiarly, sometimes in conversations between the
children and their parents and friends, sometimes in dialogue between
the children themselves, the rudiments of science, principally of
chemistry and physics, and the application of these to the common
purposes of life. And herein we again encounter one of the grand merits
of the Edgeworths, which we can to-day better appreciate than their
contemporaries. They saw clearly what in their day was apprehended only
by very few, the importance that the study of science was to acquire in
the future. Miss Edgeworth says:--
My father long ago foresaw that the taste for scientific as well as
literary knowledge, which has risen so rapidly and spread so
widely, would render it necessary to make some provision for the
early instruction of youth in science, in addition to the great and
successful attention paid to classical literatures.
And even apart from the immense importance of science in our daily life,
science is, of all studies, that best suited to the growth of a child's
mental powers. Novelty and variety are the spells of early life, and to
work these well and helpfully is the greatest good that can be done to
young people. Miss Edgeworth, in _Harry and Lucy_, as a whole succeeds
in rousing her reader's curiosity without making them suspect design,
and avoids all idea of a task. Thus the leading principles of science
are unfolded in familiar experiments which give young learners the
delight they would have in playing some interesting game, exercising
their ingenuity without tiring them. Then, having once felt the
pleasures of success, a permanent incentive to knowledge is induced,
which it remains with the parents or tutors to improve. The books are
obviously not such as are meant to be read at a sitting, and therefore
can only be put into the hands of young people with judicious care. But
in the Edgeworths' time neither old nor young devoured books after the
manner of to-day. The apparently desultory and accidental plan of the
book was really designed, purpose and moral being more skillfully
disguised than is the case with Miss Edgeworth's tales for her equals.
One of its great charms lies in the characters of the principal
_dramatis personae_, whose temperaments are exquisitely sketched,
maintained and contrasted. Lucy, the lively, playful girl, who often
allows her imagination to go rambling far afield from her judgment, a
little inclined to be volatile, loving a joke, is cousin german to
Rosamond, and, like this little girl, truly lovable. She supplies the
lighter element, while the sterner is supplied by Harry, the brother she
idolizes, who is partly her companion, partly her teacher. He has a sure
and steady rather than a brilliant and rapid intellect, great mental
curiosity and great patience in acquiring information. He is more apt to
discern differences than to perceive resemblances, and therefore he does
not always understand the wit and fun of Lucy, which at times even
provoke him. In the conversations between them there is much judicious
sprinkling of childish banter and nonsense, "an alloy necessary to make
sense work well," to use Miss Edgeworth's own expressive words. A pity
that the ever-delightful "Great Panjandrum" therein introduced is not
her own, but only a quotation from a little-known nonsense genius.
This sequel to _Harry and Lucy_ was far from finding universal favor.
Sir Walter Scott wrote of it to Joanna Baillie:--
I have not the pen of our friend Miss Edgeworth, who writes all the
while she laughs, talks, eats and drinks, and I believe, though I
do not pretend to be so far in the secret, all the time she sleeps
too. She has good luck in having a pen which walks at once so
unweariedly and so well. I do not, however, quite like her last
book on education (_Harry and Lucy_), considered as a general work.
She should have limited the title to _Education in Natural
Philosophy_, or some such term, for there is no great use in
teaching children in general to roof houses or build bridges,
which, after all, a carpenter or a mason does a great deal better
at 2s. 6d. a day. Your ordinary Harry should be kept to his
grammar, and your Lucy of most common occurrence would be kept
employed on her sampler, instead of wasting wood and cutting their
fingers, which I am convinced they did, though their historian says
nothing of it.
That both she and her father exacted much from their pupils and readers
is beyond question, but they regarded this as a wholesome effort, and
they were probably right. One thing is certain: that whatever their
shortcomings, Miss Edgeworth's children's tales exercised a wide, deep
and lasting influence over a long range of time, and nothing of equal or
even approximate importance arose coeval with them. It was she who first
brought rational morality to the level of the comprehension of
childhood, who taught the language of virtue and truth in the alphabet
of the young, thus forestalling the teaching of schools by her rare
power of combining ethics with entertainment. Miss Edgeworth can still
with advantage and pleasure hold her own even upon the present
well-stocked nursery book-shelves, and it might be well for the next
generation if we saw her there a little oftener. Better Miss Edgeworth
any day, with all her arid utilitarianism, her realism, than the sickly
sentimental unrealities of a far too popular modern school.