Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/123

Rh she had also found some faults. To this Miss Edgeworth replied:—

Nobody living but yourself could or would have written the letter I have just received from you. I wish you could have been present when it was read at our breakfast table, that you might have seen what hearty entertainment and delight it gave to father, mother, author, aunts, brothers, and sisters, all to the number of twelve. Loud laughter at your utter detestation of poor Erasmus "as nauseous as his medicines." and your impatience at all the variety of impertinent characters who distract your attention from Lord Oldborough. Your clinging to him quite satisfied us all. It was on this character my father placed his dependence, and we all agreed that if you had not liked him there would have been no hope for us. We are in the main of your opinion, that Erasmus and his letters are tiresome; but then please recollect that we had our moral to work out, and to show to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the reader how in various professions young men may get on without patronage. To the good of our moral we were obliged to sacrifice, perhaps we have sacrificed in vain. Wherever we are tiresome we may be pretty sure of this, and after all, as Madame de Staël says, "good intentions go for nothing in works of art"—much better in French, "La bonne intention n'est de rien en fait d'esprit."

You will make me forswear truth altogether, for I find whenever I meddle with the least bit of truth I can make nothing of it, and it regularly turns out ill for me. Three things to which you object are facts, and that which you most abhor is most true. A nobleman whom I never saw and whose name I have forgotten, else I should not have used the anecdote—the word which you thought I could not have written and ought not to have known how to spell. But pray observe, the fair authoress does not say this odious word in her own proper person. Why impute to me the characteristic improprieties of my characters? I meant to mark the contrast between the niceness of his grace's pride and the coarseness of his expression. I have now changed the word severe into coarse to mark this to the reader. But I cannot alter, without spoiling the fact. I tried if saliva would do, but it would not. So you must bear it as well as you can and hate His Grace of Greenwich as much as you will—but don't hate me. Did you hate Cervantes for drawing Sancho Panza eating behind the door?

My next fact, you say, is an old story. May be so, and may be it belonged to your writer originally, but I can assure you it happened