FOOTNOTES
[1]: In a notice of Miss Seward in the Annual Register, just after her death in 1809, the writer, who seems to have known her, says:—'Conscious of ability, she freely displayed herself in a manner equally remote from annoyance and affectation…. Her errors arose from a glowing imagination joined to an excessive sensibility, cherished instead of repressed by early habits. It is understood that she has left the whole of her works to Mr. Scott, the northern poet, with a view to their publication with her life and posthumous pieces.'
[2]: Mrs. Burke, hearing more of the circumstances, afterwards sent permission; but Mrs. Leadbeater being a Quakeress, and having once promised not to publish, could not take it upon herself to break her covenant.
[3]: A touching illustration of her abiding influence is to be found cited in an article in the Daily News of September 7, 1883, published as these proofs are going to press, by 'One Who Knew' Ivan Turguéneff, that great Russian whom we might almost claim if love and admiration gave one a right to count citizenship with the great men of our time. An elder brother of his knew Miss Edgeworth, perhaps at Abbotsford, for he visited Walter Scott there, or at Coppet with Madame de Staël. This man, wise and cultivated in all European literature, 'came to the conclusion that Maria Edgeworth had struck on a vein from which most of the great novelists of the future would exclusively work. She took the world as she found it, and selected from it the materials that she thought would be interesting to write about, in a clear and natural style. It was Ivan Turguéneff himself who told me this, says the writer of the article, and he modestly said that he was an unconscious disciple of Miss Edgeworth in setting out on his literary career. He had not the advantage of knowing English; but as a youth he used to hear his brother translate to visitors at his country house in the Uralian Hills passages from Irish Tales and Sketches, which he thought superior to her three-volume novels. Turguéneff also said to me,"It is possible, nay probable, that if Maria Edgeworth had not written about the poor Irish of the co. Longford and the squires and squirees, that it would not have occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about the classes parallel to them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing out the beauties of her unambitious works, to call attention to their extreme simplicity and to the distinction with which she treated the simple ones of the earth."'
[4]: And yet as I write I remember one indeed who is among us, whose portrait a Reynolds or an Opie might have been glad to paint for the generations who will love her works.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE Two instances of Bryon for Byron have been corrected.The following additional changes have been made and can be identifiedin the body of the text by a grey dotted underline: | |
| A. I. R. (in dedication) | A. T. R. |
| her sad and dimning life | her sad and dimming life |
| it was to her father hat | it was to her father that |
| who invited Mrs. Barbauld to become their minister | who invited Mr. Barbauld to become their minister |
| He was interrupted by her companion | He was interrupted by his companion |
| Mrs. Opie's description of her arrival reads a comment upon history. | Mrs. Opie's description of her arrival reads like a comment upon history. |