Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  And now, my good friend, in return I require from you prompt and entire belief in an assertion which I am about to make, which may appear to you at first incredible. But try-try; at all events the effort will give you occasion to determine a question which perhaps, excellent metaphysician as you have shown yourself, you never settled whether you can or cannot believe at will.

  That which I require you to believe is ☞ that all the admiration I have expressed of Macaulay’s work is quite uninfluenced by the self-satisfaction, vanity, pride, surprise, delight, I had in finding my own name in a note!!!!!

  Be assured, believe it or not as you may or can, that neither my vanity nor my gratitude weighed with my judgment in the slightest degree in the opinion I formed, or in that warmth with which it was poured out. In fact, I had formed my opinion, and expressed it with no less warmth to my friends round me, reading the book to me, before I came to that note; moreover, there was a mixture of shame and twinge of pain with the pleasure, the pride I felt in having a line in his immortal history given to me, when the historian makes no mention of Sir Walter Scott throughout the work, even in places where it seems impossible that genius could resist paying the becoming tribute which genius owes and loves to pay to genius. I cannot conceive how this could be. I cannot bring myself to imagine that the words Tory or Whig, or Dissenter or Churchman, or feeling of party or natural spirit, could bias such a man as Macaulay. Perhaps he reserves himself for the forty-five, and I hope in heaven it is so, and that you will tell me I am very impetuous and prematurely impertinent. Meanwhile, be so good to make my grateful and deeply-felt thanks to the great author for the honor which he has done me. When I was in London some years ago, and when I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Macaulay, I took the liberty of expressing a wish that he would visit Ireland, and that if he did we might have the honor of seeing him at our house. I am very glad to find that the Battle of the Boyne will bring him here. He must have now so many invitations from those who have the highest inducement to offer, that I hardly dare to repeat my request. But will you, my dear friends, do whatever you can with propriety for us, and say how much Mrs. Edgeworth and myself and our whole family would be gratified by his giving us even a call on his way to some better place, and even an hour of his conversation. I am now at Trim with my sister and dear brother. Trim and its ruins, and the tower, and where kings and generals and poets have been, would perhaps, he may think, be worth his seeing. Dean Butler and my sister feel as I do how many claims Mr. Macaulay must have upon his time in his visit to Ireland; but they desire me to say that if anything should bring him into this neighborhood, they should think themselves highly honored by receiving him. I am sure he would be interested by Mr. Butler’s conversation and remarks on various parts of Macaulay’s history, and I should exceedingly like to hear it commented and discussed. Little i must come in, you see, at every close. You will observe that, in speaking of Macaulay’s work, I have spoken only of the style, the only point of which I could presume to think my opinion could be of any value. Of the great attributes, of the essential qualities of the historian, accuracy, fidelity, impartiality, I could not, even if I thought myself qualified to judge, attempt to speak in this letter.

  But I am sensible that I have neither the knowledge nor the strength, much less the coolness of judgment, necessary to make opinion valuable on such subjects. I could easily give my own opinion, but — of no use. The less I am inclined to speak when I do not know, the more I am anxious to hear; and most delightful and profitable would it be to me to hear the great historian himself speak on many points which I hear discussed by my learned brother, Dean Butler, and others (on Clarendon’s character, etc., etc., etc.) We have not yet seen any of the public reviews of Macaulay’s history. No doubt the stinging, little, ephemeral insects will come out in swarms to buzz and fly-blow in the sunshine. The warmer, the brighter, the thicker the swarm will be to prick. I hope you will read this unconscionable lengthy letter when you are in your carriage, rolling about from patient to patient, and be patient yourself then, my dear doctor. You are always so very good and kind to me that I encroach. I seldom write such long epistles. As the most impudent beggar-woman in our town says to Mrs. E., “Ma’am, your ladyship, I never beg from any one so much as your ladyship; troth, never from any but you.” ...

  Give my most kind and affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Holland and your daughters and sons, and

  Believe me most garrulously and sincerely yours,

  Maria Edgeworth.

  This letter, so characteristic in its humility and generous admiration, shows no sign of old age or impaired faculties, neither is there any trace of this in one of the last she ever wrote, addressed to her sister Harriet: —

  I am heartily obliged and delighted by your being such a goose and Richard such a gander, as to be frightened out of your wits at my going up the ladder to take off the top of the clock! Know, then, that I am quite worthy of that most unmerited definition of man, “A creature that looks before and after.” Before I let on to anybody my doubts of my own capability of reaching the nail on which to hang the top, I called Shaw, and made her stand at the foot of the ladder while I went up, and found I could no more reach the nail than I could reach the moon, Exit Shaw!

  Prudence of M. E., Act 2: Summoned Cassidy, and informed him that I was to wind up the clock, and that he was promoted to take off the top for me; and then up I went and wound the clock, and wound it as I had done before you was born, as there is nothing easier, only to see that it is not going to maintain at the very instant, which is plainly to be noted by the position of the maintaining pin on the little outer wheel relative to the first deep tooth. You see I am not quite a nincompoop. I send my lines: —

  “Ireland, with all thy faults, thy follies too,

  I love thee still: still with a candid eye must view

  Thy wit too quick, still blundering into sense;

  Thy reckless humor; sad improvidence;

  And even what sober judges follies call —

  I, looking at the heart, forget them all.”

  Maria E., May, 1849.

  Miss Edgeworth had been staying with Mr. and Mrs. Butler in the spring. When taking leave she was unusually agitated and depressed, but said as she went away: “At Whitsuntide I shall return.” On the very day before she was to redeem this promise, she drove out in apparent good health, when a sudden feeling of weakness overcame her and made her return to the house. Severe pains in the region of the heart set in, and after a few hours’ illness Maria Edgeworth died — died as she had fondly wished, at home, in the arms of her stepmother. Yet another of her wishes was granted: she had spared her friends the anguish of seeing her suffer from protracted illness. May 22d, 1849, she rose from the banquet of life, where, in her own words, she had been a happy guest.

  In her latter years Miss Edgeworth had been asked to furnish prefaces of a biographical character to her novels. She refused, saying she had nothing personal to tell. “As a woman, my life, wholly domestic, cannot afford anything interesting to the public; I am like the ‘needy knife-grinder’ — I have no story to tell.”

  Was she right? or is not the story of so loving and lovable a life worth telling?

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  We are proud to present a listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.

  Only from our website can readers purchase the special Parts Edition of our Complete Works titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special volume. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.

  Series One
r />   Anton Chekhov

  Charles Dickens

  D.H. Lawrence

  Dickensiana Volume I

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  George Eliot

  H. G. Wells

  Henry James

  Ivan Turgenev

  Jack London

  James Joyce

  Jane Austen

  Joseph Conrad

  Leo Tolstoy

  Louisa May Alcott

  Mark Twain

  Oscar Wilde

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sir Walter Scott

  The Brontës

  Thomas Hardy

  Virginia Woolf

  Wilkie Collins

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Series Two

  Alexander Pushkin

  Alexandre Dumas (English)

  Andrew Lang

  Anthony Trollope

  Bram Stoker

  Christopher Marlowe

  Daniel Defoe

  Edith Wharton

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  G. K. Chesterton

  Gustave Flaubert (English)

  H. Rider Haggard

  Herman Melville

  Honoré de Balzac (English)

  J. W. von Goethe (English)

  Jules Verne

  L. Frank Baum

  Lewis Carroll

  Marcel Proust (English)

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Nikolai Gogol

  O. Henry

  Rudyard Kipling

  Tobias Smollett

  Victor Hugo

  William Shakespeare

  Series Three

  Ambrose Bierce

  Ann Radcliffe

  Ben Jonson

  Charles Lever

  Émile Zola

  Ford Madox Ford

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  George Gissing

  George Orwell

  Guy de Maupassant

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Henrik Ibsen

  Henry David Thoreau

  Henry Fielding

  J. M. Barrie

  James Fenimore Cooper

  John Buchan

  John Galsworthy

  Jonathan Swift

  Kate Chopin

  Katherine Mansfield

  L. M. Montgomery

  Laurence Sterne

  Mary Shelley

  Sheridan Le Fanu

  Washington Irving

  Series Four

  Arnold Bennett

  Arthur Machen

  Beatrix Potter

  Bret Harte

  Captain Frederick Marryat

  Charles Kingsley

  Charles Reade

  G. A. Henty

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Edgar Wallace

  E. M. Forster

  E. Nesbit

  George Meredith

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Jerome K. Jerome

  John Ruskin

  Maria Edgeworth

  M. E. Braddon

  Miguel de Cervantes

  M. R. James

  R. M. Ballantyne

  Robert E. Howard

  Samuel Johnson

  Stendhal

  Stephen Crane

  Zane Grey

  Series Five

  Algernon Blackwood

  Anatole France

  Beaumont and Fletcher

  Charles Darwin

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  Edward Gibbon

  E. F. Benson

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  George Bernard Shaw

  George MacDonald

  Hilaire Belloc

  John Bunyan

  John Webster

  Margaret Oliphant

  Maxim Gorky

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Radclyffe Hall

  Robert W. Chambers

  Samuel Butler

  Samuel Richardson

  Sir Thomas Malory

  Thomas Carlyle

  William Harrison Ainsworth

  William Dean Howells

  William Morris

  Series Six

  Anthony Hope

  Aphra Behn

  Arthur Morrison

  Baroness Emma Orczy

  Captain Mayne Reid

  Charlotte M. Yonge

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  E. W. Hornung

  Ellen Wood

  Frances Burney

  Frank Norris

  Frank R. Stockton

  Hall Caine

  Horace Walpole

  One Thousand and One Nights

  R. Austin Freeman

  Rafael Sabatini

  Saki

  Samuel Pepys

  Sir Issac Newton

  Stanley J. Weyman

  Thomas De Quincey

  Thomas Middleton

  Voltaire

  William Hazlitt

  William Hope Hodgson

  Ancient Classics

  Aeschylus

  Ammianus Marcellinus

  Apollodorus

  Apuleius

  Apollonius of Rhodes

  Aristophanes

  Aristotle

  Arrian

  Bede

  Cassius Dio

  Catullus

  Cicero

  Demosthenes

  Diodorus Siculus

  Diogenes Laërtius

  Euripides

  Frontius

  Herodotus

  Hesiod

  Hippocrates

  Homer

  Horace

  Josephus

  Julius Caesar

  Juvenal

  Livy

  Longus

  Lucan

  Lucian

  Lucretius

  Marcus Aurelius

  Martial

  Nonnus

  Ovid

  Pausanias

  Petronius

  Pindar

  Plato

  Pliny the Elder

  Pliny the Younger

  Plotinus

  Plutarch

  Polybius

  Propertius

  Quintus Smyrnaeus

  Sallust

  Sappho

  Seneca the Younger

  Sophocles

  Statius

  Strabo

  Suetonius

  Tacitus

  Terence

  Theocritus

  Thucydides

  Tibullus

  Virgil

  Xenophon

  Delphi Poets Series

  A. E. Housman

  Alexander Pope

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Andrew Marvell

  Beowulf

  Charlotte Smith

  Christina Rossetti

  D. H Lawrence (poetry)

  Dante Alighieri (English)

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Delphi Poetry Anthology

  Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)

  Edmund Spenser

  Edward Lear

  Edward Thomas

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Emily Dickinson

  Ezra Pound

  Friedrich Schiller (English)

  George Herbert

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Isaac Rosenberg

  Johan Ludvig Runeberg

  John Clare

  John Donne

  John Dryden

  John Keats

  John Milton

  John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

  Lord Byron

  Ludovico Ariosto

  Luís de Camões

  Matthew Arnold

  Michael Drayton

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Robert Browningr />
  Robert Burns

  Robert Frost

  Robert Southey

  Rumi

  Rupert Brooke

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Sir Philip Sidney

  Sir Thomas Wyatt

  Sir Walter Raleigh

  Thomas Chatterton

  Thomas Gray

  Thomas Hardy (poetry)

  Thomas Hood

  T. S. Eliot

  W. B. Yeats

  Walt Whitman

  Wilfred Owen

  William Blake

  William Cowper

  William Wordsworth

  Masters of Art

  Caravaggio

  Claude Monet

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Diego Velázquez

  Eugène Delacroix

  Gustav Klimt

  J. M. W. Turner

  Johannes Vermeer

  John Constable

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Michelangelo

  Paul Cézanne

  Paul Klee

  Peter Paul Rubens

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Sandro Botticelli

  Raphael

  Rembrandt van Rijn

  Titian

  Vincent van Gogh

  Wassily Kandinsky

  www.delphiclassics.com

  Is there an author or artist you would like to see in a series? Contact us at sales@delphiclassics.com (or via the social network links below) and let us know!

  Be the first to learn of new releases and special offers:

  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/delphiebooks

  Follow our Tweets: https://twitter.com/delphiclassics

  Explore our exciting boards at Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/delphiclassics/