To this letter Miss Edgeworth replied:—
Let me assure you that the little tale was written in playfulness, not bitterness of heart. Not one of the female committee who sat upon it every day whilst it was writing and reading ever imagined that it should be thought a severe libel upon the sex, perhaps because their attention was fixed upon Mrs. Granby, who at least is as much a panegyric as Mrs. Bolingbroke is a satire upon the sex.
Popular Tales were issued, and also in great part written, before the two series of Fashionable Tales, and, taken as a whole, do not approach them in merit. They are more crude in conception, more didactic in manner; the moral is too obviously thrust into view, and at times even the very philosophy the author strives to inculcate is halting. The intensity and severe restraint of her purpose had blinded her vision, perverted her logic; and thus the value of some of these ingenious apologues is lowered. There is a character of childishness and poorness about many of these tales that detracts seriously from the really accurate observation and acute knowledge of human nature that they inclose. Further, too, there is always such a sober, practical, authentic air about all Miss Edgeworth's narratives, that glaring inconsistencies and forced catastrophes strike us with double force as ludicrous and unnatural when introduced by her. We certainly incline to think that the result of perusing at one sitting the two volumes of Miss Edgeworth's Popular Tales could lead to that outburst of pharisaical pride:—
| Said I then to my heart, "Here's a lesson for me! |
| That man's but a picture of what I might be; |
| But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding, |
| Who have taught me, betimes, to love working and reading." |
Popular Tales were devised with a view to correct the errors and temptations of middle-class life, and were intended for a class which in those days was not much in the habit of reading.
Mr. and Miss Edgeworth, though advanced and liberal thinkers in many ways, were conservative in others, and, curiously enough, carried the idea of class distinction into the domain of reading. They deemed that to reach the middle classes a different character of story must be conceived from that destined for persons of rank. There is a naïvete, a gentle absurdity, about this simple fancy that we cannot help attributing to Mr. Edgeworth's unimaginative mind. In a brief but bombastic preface this worthy personage sets forth the pretension of the writer of these stories, and gives a list of the classes for which they are adapted. Why did he not also devise some method, by which to insure that none of the tales should be read or bought save by persons of a certain social standard? It would have been equally reasonable. To make a distinction between tales for children and for adults is proper and right; to draw a fine distinction between classes, unfit and childish. The process of natural selection will of its own accord effect the result that no one will read that which is tedious. Yet even when hampered by the illustration of copy-book morality, Miss Edgeworth could not hide her power. She never repeats herself; every story is unlike the other. She does not angrily apply herself to the correction of the vices and abuses she holds peculiar to the class she addresses; neither does she magnify, even though she emphasizes. We only behold them shorn of the indulgences and palliations they too often meet with. She was neither a Utopian purist nor a sentimental innocent; nor can she belie a natural tendency to make her ethics rather a code of high-minded expediency than of high principle for its own sake only. Throughout her writings she shows that from low as well as high motives, good actions are the best; but she never suffers her characters to rest in the reward of a quiet conscience. Her supreme good sense was always mingled with a regard for the social proprieties; she never loses these quite from sight; her idea of right is as much to preserve these as for right itself. For, after all, Miss Edgeworth's life revolved amid the fashionable world, and lofty as her aims are, she was not wholly untainted by her surroundings. She accounts it no crime in her heroines if they look out for a good establishment, money, horses, carriages; provided always that the man they marry be no dunce, she will overlook any little lack of affection. But, after all, she was teaching only in accordance with the superficial philosophy of the last century, which led people to found their doctrines entirely upon self-interest.
Still, a tone of rationality and good sense was so new in the tales of Miss Edgeworth's period, that to this alone a large share of the undoubted success and popularity of the Popular Tales may be ascribed. Lord Jeffrey, criticising them at the time of their appearance, remarked that "it required almost the same courage to get rid of the jargon of fashionable life, and the swarms of peers, foundlings and seducers, as it did to sweep away the mythological persons of antiquity and to introduce characters who spoke and acted like those who were to peruse these adventures." Miss Edgeworth was certainly the first woman to make domestic fiction the vehicle of great and necessary truths, and on this account alone she must ever take high rank, and be forgiven if that which has been said of her in general be specially true of Popular Tales, that: "She walks by the side of her characters as Mentor by the side of Telemachus, keeping them out of all manner of pleasant mischief, and wagging the monitory head and waving the remonstrating finger, should their breath come thick at approaching adventures."
CHAPTER IX.
VISIT TO LONDON.—MR. EDGEWORTH'S DEATH.
Busily, happily, uneventfully time flowed on at Edgeworthstown, while abroad Miss Edgeworth's fame was steadily on the increase. But whatever the world might say, however kind, nay flattering, its verdict, this preëminently sensible woman did not suffer herself to be deluded by success. That she knew precisely and gauged correctly the extent and limits of her power, is proved by a letter written to Mr. Elton Hammond, who had over-zealously defended her from criticism:—