MARIA EDGEWORTH.*

THE literary ability of Miss Helen Zimmern is in itself a sufficient reason for Mr. Ingram's entrusting the biographer of Schopenhauer and the interpreter of Carmen Silva with the task of placing Maria Edgeworth in his series of " Eminent Women." In addition to this security that her work would be well done, Miss Helen Zimmern was recommended by her good- fortune in having access to an unpublished memoir, written by one of Miss Edgeworth's four stepmothers, as well as to a large number of private letters.

There could hardly be a stronger proof of the oblivion into which Miss Edgeworth had fallen than the fact that Miss Broughton called her recent novel Belinda, and that it ran its course as a serial without any comments being made on the author's adoption of the title of Miss Edgeworth's once cele- brated story. No novelist could have appropriated the title of one of Richardson's, Miss Burney's, or Miss Austen's novels undetected or uncensured. We do not think that Miss Zimmern will make the present generation of novel- readers send for Belinda, The Absentee, Patronage, and Castle Rackrent; the taste of the day has declined upon too low a level to encourage us in any such hope ; but those who have in their youth read these books, and who remember them as gratefully as one always remembers the books that charmed one then, will not be slow to acknowledge their obligation to the biographer of Maria Edgeworth. Miss Zimmern has done her work so admirably that the book has equal charms for readers who can follow its critical appreciation with personal knowledge of the subject, and readers to whom it presents an unknown personality of an attractive kind.

Both as a writer and as a woman, Miss Edgeworth commands respect. The soundness of her mind, her supreme good-sense, without either harshness or pretension, her dutiful, cheerful, evenly-balanced disposition, her unflagging industry, and her habitual self-sacrifice, make up a character which must have been impressive, even without the intellectual gifts that dis- tinguished her. The quality and range of those intellectual gifts, and of the work which Miss Edgeworth did by their aid, are, we think, as correctly as they are ably defined by her sympathetic, but singularly impartial biographer. Purely as a piece of literary work, we regard Miss Zimmern's " general esti- mate " of Miss Edgeworth as a remarkable production ; as a compte rendu, we are disposed to accept it, with only one reserva- tion. We suspect that Miss Zimmern is too moderato be so fond of Frank and Rosamond as we were ; that she could not care so much about the West-Indian youth who got into trouble, and that she never heard of L'Amie Inconnue, for that best of all burlesques upon the falsely-sentimental style of a now forgotten day (as good as The Heroine was of the mock

• Maria Edgeworth. By Helen Zimmern. London : W. H. Allen and Co.

heroic) finds no mention in her book. But we cling, with the tenacious attachment of fogeydom, to the good things of youth ; to the memory of Araminta, Orlando, the lowly cot in the vale of the classic land of the Bards, and the " neat-handed Rhillis " who was also barefooted. Miss Zimmern's remark that the tenderness which Miss Edgeworth displayed as a. woman she lacked as an author is characteristic of the nice observation she has brought to bear on her subject, and seems to us to furnish at least a part of the explantition of why" Miss Edgeworth certainly missed, but only just missed, the highest greatness." She adhered as closely to "good society," the well-to-do classes, and the proprieties of life, as Miss Austen did ; she avoided the tumultuous as sedulously,. and, except for special purposes, she ignored les miserables as completely ; but she lacked the indefinable distinction that Miss Austen impressed upon her Anne Elliot and her Elinor Dash- wood, and the subtly beautiful simplicity with which she invested her Fanny Price. Miss Edgeworth, although not tender, is, as Miss Zimmern says, always amiable and kindly, even though she does not look far beneath the surface, and never deals with the soul :-

" Unknown to her were its silent tragedies, its conflicts, hopes, and fears. Those feelings that did not manifest themselves in life or action were beyond ber range of comprehension. She had a genius for observing such things as can be observed; the lower depths are

never mined by herself or her characters Her novels have been described as a sort of essence of common-sense, and even more happily it has been said that it was her genius to be wise Hers was no heated fancy ; she had no comprehension of fiery passions ; she does not believe in chance In her stories events mostly occur as in sober and habitual fact She admitted

just that amount of tenderness which the owner could keep under due control. She had no taste for what was named the grandeur, beauty, and mystery of crime. She seldom devoted her attention to crimes at all, but gave it to those minor virtues and vices that contribute more largely to our daily sufferings or enjoyments In her Popular and Moral Tales she was encumbered like a clergyman in his sermon, and hence her too solemn and rather stifling air of moral reflection.

Next to her children's and Irish tales, she is most excellent in her studies from fashionable life. Her heroes and heroines, moving in the dismal round of inanities, miscalled diversions, are portraits touched up with nice care in detail, with a keen eye for subtleties and demi-tints. Her morality, though unexceptionable, is never austere ; she allows and even sanctions worldly wisdom within certain limits, she was too much a woman of the world herself to set up utopian or ascetic standards."

It does not appear from her book that Miss Helen Zimmerli has any personal knowledge of Ireland, or that she feels any attraction towards or sympathy with that country. Her grasp of her subject is less strong when she deals with Miss Edge- worth's Irish stories ; she resorts more frequently and freely to the critical judgments of others, and she does not seem to see that Castle Backrent was a caricature. Miss Edgeworth had but a limited range of humour ; it was, however, " racy of the soil," i.e., County Longford.

The influence of her father over the mind, the life, and the writings of Miss Edgeworth is keenly appreciated and closely traced by her biographer. Mr. Edgeworth was, to our mind, a singularly unpleasant person. His five marriages Miss Zimmern dismisses with discreet brevity, remarking that,—" Whatever may be thought of Mr. Edgeworth's many and hasty marriages, it must be admitted that they all turned out to the happiness of himself and his children." There is something odious in this quick succession of marriages, to which " her fatber, with his persuasive tongue, overcame Maria's objections ;" and also in the man's pedantry, egotism, and solemn dictatorial ways. Yet the Edgeworths were a united family, and Edgeworthstown was a happy home, wherein the literary daughter worked away, under the unceasing tutelage of the doctrinaire father, without any of the leisure, seclusion, or con- sideration so much insisted upon by modern litgrateurs of both sexes, while the busy life of a numerous family went on around her. The last two letters written by Miss Edgeworth, in her eighty-second year, are as fully characteristic of her clear, bright, kindly, definite, book-loving mind, and of her warm heart, as any of those which show her as she was throughout her long life. One of these letters, addressed to her old friend, Sir Henry Holland, contains the admirable appreciation of Macaulay's History which so struck Macaulay by its dis- crimination and ability that be begged to be allowed to keep it. At the same time she wrote :—" Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age. Last January 1st was my eighty-second birthday, and I think I had as much enjoyment from books as ever I had in my life. I am surprised to find how much more history interests me now than when I was young, and how much more I am now interested in the same events recorded, and their causes and consequences shown, in this history of the French Revolution, and in all the history of Europe during the last quarter of a century, than I was when the news came fresh and fresh in the newspapers. I do not think I had sense enough to take in the relations and propor- tions of the events. It was like moving a magnifying-glass over the parts of a beetle, and not taking in the whole."

Miss Zimmern has chosen with sound discretion the few extracts by which she illustrates the successive stages of her narrative. Miss Edgeworth's travels were not extensive, but they were interesting, and here we have charming descriptions of her

visits to the Abbe Morellet (the Abbe Mords-les of Madame de Remusat), Madame de Genlis, and La Harpe. At the Abbe's

she met Madame d'Oudinot, Rousseau's once beautiful Julie, a " shockingly ugly," thin, squinting woman, of seventy-two, in

a black bonnet, " as gay and open-hearted as a girl of fifteen."

Madame de Genlis, by stating that Pamela was not her daughter, went out of her way to tell the translator of Adele et Theodore a falsehood, on a subject that was no business

of Miss Edgeworth's. Here is a little sketch of the scene at La Harpe's, whom Miss Edgeworth designates as " the Devot." " He was in a dirty, reddish night-gown, and very dirty night-cap, bound round the forehead with a superlatively dirty, chocolate-coloured ribbon. Madame Recamier, the beautiful, the elegant, robed in white satin, trimmed with white fur, seated herself on the elbow of his arm-chair, and besought

him to repeat his verses." Miss Edgeworth regarded French literature with the same aversion that M. Daryll imputes (we do not know on what authority) to the Queen, in his La Vie Publique en Angleterre. Some of the strongest passages quoted by Miss Zimmern express and explain that aversion.

A very interesting portion of this biography relates to Miss Edgeworth's later years ; especially to Mr. Ticknor's sojourn at Edgeworthstown, and his impressions of the gifted little old lady, with such kind, frank manners, whose mild, deep grey eyes looked straight into the faces of those she spoke to. He was particularly struck by her uncommon quickness of perception, her fertility of allusion, and the great resources which a remarkable memory supplied to her. She would talk freely about herself and her works, but she never introduced the subject, or seemed glad to continue it. She had none of the vanity of authorship, and lived in the intensity and variety of her family affections. Pro- bably no unmarried woman ever less resembled the typical " old maid " than did Maria Edgeworth. Her biographer tells us that she was deeply wounded by the accusation of want of religion, and this may be so; but there are those still living who knew Miss Edgeworth, and who affirm that she did not believe in revealed religion. It would be difficult to argue from her works either that she did or did not so believe.

No spiritual side to her picture ever manifests itself. We quote what Miss Zimmern says on this subject, because it is so well put, although we individually fail to see that work can be said

to be done for God, without the worker's acknowledgment of God's authority and teaching:—

" The Edgeworths thought little, if at all, of the next world, find- ing full occupation for their minds in this. Miss Edgeworth was hemmed in by the visible. She did not seek to justify the ways of God to man; life was to her not a riddle ; if man would but act rightly, all would be well. There was in her nothing of the poet and the seer, and by so much as she fails to speak to humanity in all its aspects, by so mach she fails to take rank amongst the greatest teachers of our race. But, with wisdom and good-sense, she recog- nised her limitations ; she set herself a humbler, but no less useful task ; she carried out her aim faithfully and conscientiously, and by so much she, too, must be ranked among the good and faithful servants who do the work appointed by their Lord."

There is a delightful chapter on Miss Edgeworth's "Home Life," during all the busy years that she passed under her father's eye and orders. Her punctuality, neatness, orderliness are charmingly described. A character most loveable, most enviable, is revealed. So punctual and regular were her ways, that for many years a lady residing in the village used to be roused by her maid with the words," Miss Edgeworth's walking, ma'am ; it's eight o'clock." She always wrote, like Miss Austen, in the common sitting-room, and for many years used a little desk her father had made for her, and on which, shortly before his death, he inscribed the following words,—words most charac- teristic of Edgeworthian manners and formalities,—with which we must take leave of Miss Zimmern's truly admirable work :—

" On this humble desk were written all the numerous works of my daughter, Maria Edgeworth, in the common sitting-room of my family. In these works, which were chiefly written to please me, she has never attacked the personal character of any human being, or inter- fered with the opinions of any sect or party, religions or political ; while endeavouring to inform and instruct others, she improved and amused her own mind and gratified her heart, which I do believe is better than her head."