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.