'The prophecy was, by a kind neighbour, repeated to him, and, as I have heard him say, it made such an impression as tended considerably to prevent its own accomplishment.
'He acquired the habit of calculating and forming estimates most accurately. He not only estimated what every object of fancy and taste would cost, but he accustomed himself to consider what the actual enjoyment of the indulgence would be. … He upon all occasions carefully separated the idea of the pleasure of possession from that of contemplating any object of taste.'
She also mentions that 'he observed, that the happiness that people derive from the cultivation of their understandings is not in proportion to the talents and capacities of the individual, but is compounded of the united measure of these, and of the use made of them by the possessor; this must include good or ill temper, and other moral dispositions. Some with transcendent talents waste these in futile projects; others make them a source of misery, by indulging that overweening anxiety for fame which ends in disappointment, and excites too often the powerful passions of envy and jealousy; others, too humble, or too weak, fret away their spirits and their life in deploring that they were not born with more abilities. But though so many lament the want of talents, few actually derive as much happiness as they might from the share of understanding which they possess. My father never wasted his time in deploring the want of that which he could by exertion acquire. Nor did he suffer fame in any pursuit to be his first object.'
We feel that we are in the moral atmosphere of Paley and Butler when she adds:—'Far beyond the pleasures of celebrity, or praise in any form, he classed self-approbation and benevolence: these he thought the most secure sources of satisfaction in this world.' This is the spirit of the Eighteenth Century, the clear cold tone of the moral philosopher, not the enthusiastic impulse of the fervid theologian, of Pusey, Keble, or Newman. One star does indeed differ from another in glory, but all give brilliance to our firmament and raise our thoughts from earth.
Such a life as Richard Edgeworth's seems to me to be more instructive than even that excellent moral guide-book written by Sir John Lubbock, The Uses of Life, because abstract maxims take less hold of uncultivated or unanalytical minds than the portrait of a man of flesh and blood. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress reaches many hearts which are unmoved by an ordinary sermon, and Edgeworth's life was indeed a progress, a constant striving not only to improve himself but to help others onward in the right way. He showed what a good landlord could do in Ireland, and what a good father can do in binding a family in happy union.