Ruskin could not have modeled the idea of appending a poetry anthology to his “Harry and Lucy” volumes on Maria Edgeworthʼs Harry and Lucy Concluded or Frank: A Sequel to Frank in Early Lessons—the primary inspirations for the MS I narrative—since Edgeworthʼs origingals contain no such feature. Instead, he might have encountered poetry anthologies in numerous places. The most likely source was the Evangelical Magazine, which Margaret Ruskin read regularly from 1823 and possibly earlier. From its founding in 1793, each issue featured a brief collection of poems with a header similar to Ruskinʼs title for his anthology—the single word “Poetry”, which in the magazine is printed in letter‐spaced capitals. Especially compelling for these monthly anthologies as an inspiration is their inclusion of occasional poems such as New Yearʼs Poems in the annual January issue, which Ruskin likewise composed annually as a present to his father. Unlike the majority of Ruskinʼs poems, however, the poetry selected for anthologizing in the Evangelical Magazine was almost exclusively religious.

Other sources that might have modelded poetry anthologies for early nineteenth‐century youths include James Enfieldʼs anthology for instructing elocution, The Speaker; or, Miscellaneous Pieces, Selected from the Best English Writers, and Disposed under Proper Heads, with a View to Facilitate the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking, which may have served as a source for Ruskinʼs poem, “The Needless Alarm”. Another source, which may have served Ruskin as a model, not so much for the print design of poetry anthologies as for the serendipidous mode of reading afforded by anthologies, was presented by Evenings at Home (1792–96) by John Aikin (1747–1822) and Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825). In the introduction to this “miscellaneous collection of tales, fables, and dialogues, interspersed with some short pieces of verse”—gathered, as Aikinʼs daughter and biographer, Lucy Aikin, remarks, with “no arrangement or classification of the pieces” and presented with “apparent desultoriness” (Aikin, Memoir of John Aikin, 1:157)—the narrator tells a story explaining the collectionʼs subtitle, The Juvenile Budget Opened. A budget can refer to both a collection and its container; and to open oneʼs budget can mean both to tap into such a container and figuratively to speak oneʼs mind (“budget, n.,” OED Online).

According to the narratorʼs story, the “juvenile budget” that originated Evenings at Home came to be collected and opened to view as the result of a “domestic plan” that was followed by the Fairborne family of Beechgrove for “varying . . . [the] amusements” and “promoting the instruction and entertainment of the younger part” of the “numerous progeny of children of both sexes”. Friends and relations of the family, “who were entertained with cheerfulness and hospitality, free from ceremony and parade”, “would frequently produce a fable, a story, or dialogue, adapted to the age and understanding of the young people”. These compositions were “always considered as a high favour”, so that, “when the pieces were once read over, they were carefully deposited by Mrs. Fairborne in a box, of which she kept the key:

Aikin and Barbauldʼs preference for “pomiscuous” ordering is a reminder of the flexibility that was advocated by educationists and their system of “practical” education. In the “Address to Mothers” by Richard Lovell Edgeworth, which prefaces some editions of Early Lessons, the writer insists on allowing even greater authority to the childʼs “little hand”—not just to sift at random and convey a reading, as in the case of the Fairborne child, but deliberately to select what reading is best “adapted to [its] age and understanding”. “Well educated children”, Edgeworth writes, “are . . . the best judges of what is fit for children”; and parents should “select what they find upon trial to be the best for their immediate purpose, and to lay aside the rest for another opportunity”. Whereas on the one hand the Edgeworths took care to arrange their books for children as a succession of age‐appropriate lessons pitched to the abilities of their readers—from the most accessible “early lessons” in Frank: A Book for Boys and Harry and Lucy, to Rosamond, and finally to Frank: A Sequel and Harry and Lucy Concluded—on the other hand, the Edgeworths emphasized that “different parts of . . . [these books] are suited to the tastes of different children, as well as to children of different ages” (R. L. Edgeworth, “Address to Mothers”, 5–6).

Judging by the evidence of Ruskinʼs “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol I”, and the poetry anthology appended to it, he took advantage of both the graduated progression of the educationistsʼ books and the permission to range at will. For youngest children, the “Address to Mothers” recommends works by Aikin and Barbauld—first, Barbauldʼs Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose, and then Aikin and Barbauldʼs Evenings at Home. While pesumably Ruskinʼs exposure to works for the nursery predated his project in MS I, his poem, “The Needless Alarm”, retains vestiges of that earliest reading. At the same time, Ruskin ranged freely, often imitating texts beyond his years. Whereas the “Address to Mothers” recommends acquainting young children with natural history, yet advises delaying books that “teach particular sciences, or distinct branches of knowledge” (R. L. Edgeworth, “Address to Mothers”, 7), in the MS I Poetry Anthology, Ruskin reverses this recommended order, by starting with the ambitious “When furious up from mines the water pours” [“The Steam Engine”], an imitation of a poem by Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802). Similarly, whereas the “Address to Mothers” warns that “there is still wanting a series of little books, preparatory to” Scientific Dialogues by Jeremiah Joyce (1763–1816) (R. L. Edgeworth, “Address to Mothers”, 10), Ruskin forged ahead undaunted to copy some of Joyceʼs most scientifically advanced observations verbatim in “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol I”.