Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/125

Rh ever composed The admirable characters of King Corny and Sir Ulick O'Shane. and all the wonderful scenes full of wit, humour, and feeling, were written in agony of anxiety, with trembling hand and tearful eyes. As she finished chapter after chapter, she read them out, the whole family assembling in her father's room to listen to them. Her father enjoyed these readings so exceedingly, as to reward her for the wonderful efforts she made.

Enfeebled as he was by illness, and often while enduring pain, Mr. Edgeworth nevertheless continued as before to revise his daughter's MS. with "an acuteness, a perseverance of attention of which I cannot bear to think," she writes in after years. "He would work at it in his bed for hours together, once at an end for six hours, during an interval of sickness and exquisite pain."

Thanks to the kindness of her publisher, she was able on Mr. Edgeworth's birthday (May 1817) to put the printed volumes into his hands. It was the last book of hers to which he was to write a preface, and it was characteristic, like his others:—

This preface was dated May 31st, 1817. On June