I cannot part from this excellent old friend of British boys, without calling to mind her ardent Whiggism, and her very pronounced advocacy of the American cause, in her last poem of Eighteen hundred and eleven; the republican sympathies alienated a good many of her Tory friends, and brought to her temporary disrepute. Wherefor, I think, patriotic American boys may, on some coming fourth of July, fling their caps into the air for the kindly, brave-speaking Mrs. Barbauld, and for her Evenings at Home!
Miss Edgeworth.
An Irish story-teller.
You may be sure that I have not forgotten Miss Edgeworth, who was a good friend of Mrs. Barbauld, and who scored Dr. Johnson and Boswell too, for the printing of their slurs upon Miss Aikin.[[8]]
I suspect it would not be an easy task to bring young people, nowadays, to much enthusiasm about Miss Edgeworth[[9]] and her books; and yet if I were to tell all that "we fellows" used to think about her when her Popular Tales, and her delightful Parent's Assistant, with its stories exactly of the right length—about Lazy Lawrence, and Simple Susan, and the False Key, and Tarlton—were in vogue, I am afraid you would give me very little credit for critical sagacity. A most proper and interesting old lady we reckoned her, and do still. I for one never counted on her being young; it seemed to me that she must have been born straight into the severities of middle age and of story-telling. I could never imagine her at a game of romps, or buying candies on the sly. Though I had never seen her portrait—and no one else, for that matter—yet I knew the face—as well as that of my own grandmother; and what a good, kind, serene, motherly face it was! There was dignity in it, however; no boy would have thought of approaching her without a study of his deportment; he would see to it that his shoe-lacings were tied and his waistcoat buttons all in place—else, a shake of the head that would have made the cap-strings, and the frisette, and the starched ruffles shiver. But we must not speak lightly of the authoress, to whom thousands of elderly people owe so much of instruction and of entertainment.
Miss Edgeworth.
She was the daughter of an Irish gentleman who made a runaway match at Gretna Green, Maria Edgeworth being a child of that irregular marriage; and her father being widowed shortly after, married three other wives[[10]] successively, whose children filled the great house at Edgeworthtown in Ireland, where the authoress grew up (though born in England), and where she came to that knowledge of Irish character and habit which gives distinction and the greatest charm to her books.
Scott read them gleefully and admiringly, and as he himself confesses, took a hint from them, to put Scottish character into story, as this English-Irish lady had put Irish character into hers; and he says in his first outspoken preface to the Waverley series—that Miss Edgeworth in "making the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbors may truly be said to have done more toward completing the union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up." Such laurels were enough for her fame—did not braver ones grow out of the thumb-worn edges of her books. I think it would be safe to distrust the honor and directness of purpose of any boy or man who, after reading—has either scorn or dread of Maria Edgeworth.
One will not find startling things in her writing; nor will you find great brilliancy of execution—nor the pretty banter and delicate English humor, and finer touches which belong to Miss Austen: but you will find orderly progress and a good orderly story—illuminated by flashes of Irish wit, and glowing through and through with the kindness of a heart which never saw suffering without sympathy, and never any joys of even the most vulgar, without a tender satisfaction. Add to this a shrewd common sense—which never lost its way in romantic pitfalls, and an unblinking honesty, and charity of purpose—always making itself felt, and always driving a nail—and you have an array of qualities which will, I think, keep good Miss Edgeworth's name alive for a long period to come. Few people will have the courage to invest in the whole of her score of volumes octavo. It is hardly to be advised; but you may wisely choose a sprinkling of them; her Frank, for instance—her Rackrent—her Ormond, and a volume or two of her shorter tales, which will bravely hold their own amongst all the goody books of a later generation.