'Ever the true friend and champion of female literature, and zealous for the honour of the female sex, he rejoiced with all the enthusiasm of a warm heart when he found, as he now did, female genius guided by feminine discretion. He exulted in every instance of literary celebrity, supported by the amiable and respectable virtues of private life; proving by example that the cultivation of female talents does not unfit women for their domestic duties and situation in society.'
When Maria began to write she always told her father her rough plan, and he, 'with the instinct of a good critic, used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose.—"Sketch that and show it to me!"—These words' (she adds), 'from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hopes of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I use to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected —"I don't want any of your painting—none of your drapery!—I can imagine all that—let me see the bare skeleton." . . .
'After a sketch had his approbation, he would not see the filling it up till it had been worked upon for a week or a fortnight, or till the first thirty or forty pages were written; then they were read to him; and if he thought them going on tolerably well, the pleasure in his eyes, the approving sound of his voice, even without the praise he so warmly bestowed, were sufficient and delightful excitements to "go on and finish." When he thought that there was spirit in what was written, but that it required, as it often did, great correction, he would say, "Leave that to me; it is my business to cut and correct—yours to write on." His skill in cutting, his decision in criticism, was peculiarly useful to me. His ready invention and infinite resource, when I had run myself into difficulties or absurdities, never failed to extricate me at my utmost need. . . .
'Independently of all the advantages, which I as an individual received from my father's constant course of literary instruction, this was of considerable utility in another and less selfish point of view. My father called upon all the family to hear and judge of all we were writing. The taste for literature, and for judging of literary composition, was by this means formed and exercised in a large family, including a succession of nine or ten children, who grew up during the course of these twenty-five years. Stories of children exercised the judgment of children, and so on in proportion to their respective ages, all giving their opinions, and trying their powers of criticism fearlessly and freely. . . .
'He would sometimes advise me to lay by what was done for several months, and turn my mind to something else, that we might look back at it afterwards with fresh eyes. . . .
'I may mention, because it leads to a general principle of criticism, that, in many cases, the attempt to join truth and fiction did not succeed: for instance, Mr. Day's educating Sabrina for his wife suggested the story of Virginia and Clarence Hervey in "Belinda." But to avoid representing the real character of Mr. Day, which I did not think it right to draw, I used the incident with fictitious characters, which I made as unlike the real persons as I possibly could. My father observed to me afterwards that, in this and other instances, the very circumstances that were taken from real life are those that have been objected to as improbable or impossible; for this, as he showed me, there are good and sufficient reasons. In the first place, anxiety to avoid drawing the characters that were to be blameable or ridiculous from any individuals in real life, led me to apply whatever circumstances were taken from reality to characters quite different from those to whom the facts had occurred; and consequently, when so applied, they were unsuitable and improbable: besides, as my father remarked the circumstances which in real life fix the attention, because they are out of the common course of events, are for this very reason unfit for the moral purposes, as well as for the dramatic effect of fiction. The interest we take in hearing an uncommon fact often depends on our belief in its truth. Introduce it into fiction, and this interest ceases, the reader stops to question the truth or probability of the narrative, the illusion and the dramatic effect are destroyed; and as to the moral, no safe conclusion for conduct can be drawn from any circumstances which have not frequently happened, and which are not likely often to recur. In proportion as events are extraordinary, they are useless or unsafe as foundations for prudential reasoning.
'Besides all this, there are usually some small concurrent circumstances connected with extraordinary facts, which we like and admit as evidences of the truth, but which the rules of composition and taste forbid the introducing into fiction; so that the writer is reduced to the difficulty either of omitting the evidence on which the belief of reality rests, or of introducing what may be contrary to good taste, incongruous, out of proportion to the rest of the story, delaying its progress or destructive of its unity. In short, it is dangerous to put a patch of truth into a fiction, for the truth is too strong for the fiction, and on all sides pulls it asunder.'
To live with Edgeworth must have been to enjoy a constant mental stimulus; he could not bear his companions to use words without attaching ideas to them; he did not want talk to consist of a fluent utterance of second-hand thoughts, but always encouraged the expression of genuine opinion.
To show how willing Edgeworth was to help a child in understanding a word which was new to it, I will quote from one of his letters to Maria:
'Give my love to little F, and tell her that I had not time to explain a section to her. I therefore beg that, with as little explanation as possible, you will bisect a lemon before her, and point out the appearance of the rind, of the cavities, and seeds; and afterwards, at your leisure, get a small cylinder of wood turned for her, and cut it into a transverse section and into a longitudinal section.'