Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/95

Rh Miss Edgeworth trod; but while Miss Burney aimed at amusement only, Miss Edgeworth inaugurated the novel with a purpose.

Perhaps no phrase has been more misunderstood than this of "a novel with a purpose." Obviously it is not only right but imperative that a novel, or any work of art, should have a leading idea, an aim; but this is markedly different from a didactic purpose, which is implied by the phrase. Headers of novels demand before all else to be entertained, and are justified in that demand, and they merely submit to such instruction or moralising as can be poured into their minds without giving them too much trouble. Miss Edgeworth lost sight of this too often ; indeed, it was a point of view that did not enter into her philosophy, narrowed as her experience was by the boundaries of home and the all-pervading influence of her father's passion for the didactic. The omission proved the stumbling-block that hindered her novels from attaining the highest excellence. A moral was ever upper-most in Miss Edgeworth's mind, and for its sake she often strained truth and sacrificed tenderness. She was for ever weighted by her purpose ; hence her imagination, her talents, had not free play, and hence the tendency in all her writings to make things take a more definite course than they do in real life, where purpose and results are not always immediately in harmony, nor indeed always evident. Miss Kavanagh has aptly said, "Life is more mysterious than Miss Edgeworth has made it." Having said this, however, we have laid our finger upon the weak point of her novels, in which there is so much to praise, such marked ability, such delicious humour, such exuberant ereative fancy and variety, that the general public does