."

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)

The first dated "poem" was written a month before little John Ruskin
reached the age of seven. It is a tale of a mouse, in seven octosyllabic
couplets, "The Needless Alarm," remarkable only for an unexpected
correctness in rhyme, rhythm, and reason.

His early verse owes much to the summer tours, which were prolific in
notes; everything was observed and turned into verse. The other
inspiring source was his father--the household deity of both wife and
child, whose chief delight was in his daily return from the city, and in
his reading to them in the drawing-room at Herne Hill. John was packed
into a recess, where he was out of the way and the draught; he was
barricaded by a little table that held his own materials for amusement,
and if he liked to listen to the reading, he had the chance of hearing
good literature, the chance sometimes of hearing passages from Byron and
Christopher North and Cervantes, rather beyond his comprehension, for
his parents were not of the shockable sort: with all their religion and
strict Scotch morality, they could laugh at a broad jest, as
old-fashioned people could.

So he associated his father and his father's readings with the poetry
of reflection, as he associated the regular summer round with the poetry
of description.