go abroad with her adored husband, but lets him go alone and remains with her father, who, it is true, was in grief, but who had another daughter to console him. This might be Edgeworthian, but it was not human nature; and the incident gave universal offence.
Every new book of value found its way to Edgeworthstown, and was eagerly read and discussed by the family. Miss Austen was soon an established favourite, while Mrs. Inchbald had long been valued. An occasional correspondence was maintained with her. Writing of the Simple Story, Miss Edgeworth says:—
By the force that is necessary to repress feelings we judge of the intensity of the feeling, and yon always contrive to give us by intelligible but simple signs the measure of this force. Writers of inferior genius waste their words in describing feeling, in making those who pretend to be agitated by passion describe the effects of that passion and talk of the rending of their hearts, &c. — a gross blunder, as gross as any Irish blunder — for the heart cannot feel and describe its own feelings at the same moment. It is "being like a bird in two places at once." . . . Did you really draw the characters from life, or did you invent them? You excel, I think, peculiarly, in avoiding what is commonly called fine writing—a sort of writing which I detest, which calls the attention away from the thing to the manner, from the feeling to the language, which sacrifices everything to the sound, to the mere rounding of a period, which mistakes stage effect for nature. All who are at all used to writing know and detect the trick of the trade immediately, and, speaking for myself, I know that the writing which has the least appearance of literary manufacture, almost always pleases me the best. It. has more originality in narration of fictitious events, it most surely succeeds in giving the idea of reality and in making the biographer for the time pass for nothing. But there are few who can in this manner bear the mortification of staying behind the scenes. They peep out, eager for applause, and destroy all illusion by crying, "I said it! I wrote it! I invented it all! Call me to the stage, and crown me directly!"
Mrs. Inchbald had written praising Patronage, but
