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 popularised, and instruction and tale so skilfully 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
