acquiesced in what Miss Edgeworth had felt, that she of all persons was the least fitted to be the biographer of the man whom she so blindly adored.
The first volume is entirely Mr. Edgeworth's own writing, the second is hers ; she takes up the narrative on his final removal to Ireland. Although written in his heavy-footed, stilted style that broke forth now and again into comic pomposity, of the two, his is the most entertaining, for he tells many stories that do not concern himself alone. Thus, though he is by no means a graphic writer, we can gather from his pages some notion of the little provincial Mutual Admiration Society that was gathered together at Lichfield under the ægis of Dr. Darwin; of the nature of society in Ireland during his youth; of the state of mechanical science in England. But there is also much that is puerile, some few things that are in bad taste; and the book contains, besides, some really careless blunders with regard to events for which the data were within reach of all. In Miss Edgeworth's portion it is easily seen that she does not write freely. Even her style, usually more flexible and spontaneous, has caught a reflection from his, while the position in which she stood to the object of her work hindered her from exercising that keen critical judgment which she possessed, and which would certainly have come to the fore had the subject of her work been a stranger to her. Only while writing about such events as do not immediately deal with her father is she herself. Probably the very anxiety she felt regarding the book was a dim, unformulated consciousness that she had not made it all she desired. The press spoke but coolly. The Quarterly Review published a somewhat savage article; indeed, with so much bitterness was it written, that though one is at
