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In her later years Miss Edgeworth was often asked to write abiographical preface to her novels. She refused. "As a woman," she said,"my life, wholly domestic, can offer nothing of interest to the public."Incidents indeed, in that quiet happy home existence, there were none tonarrate, nothing but the ordinary joys and sorrows which attend everyhuman life. Yet the letters of one so clear-sighted and sagacious—onewhom Macaulay considered to be the second woman of her age—arevaluable, not only as a record of her times, and of many who wereprominent figures in them: but from the picture they naturally give of asimple, honest, generous, high-minded character, filled from youth toage with love and goodwill to her fellow-creatures, and a desire fortheir highest good. An admirable collection of Miss Edgeworth's letterswas printed after her death by her stepmother and lifelong friend, butonly for private circulation. As all her generation has long sincepassed away, Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown now permits that theseletters should be read beyond the limits of the family circle. An editorhas had little more to do than to make a selection, and to write such athread of biography as might unite the links of the chain.
In the flats of the featureless county of Longford stands the large andhandsome but unpretentious house of Edgeworthstown. The scenery here hasfew natural attractions, but the loving care of several generations hasgradually beautified the surroundings of the house, and few homes havebeen more valued or more the centre round which a large family circlehas gathered in unusual sympathy and love. In his Memoirs, Mr.Edgeworth tells us how his family, which had given a name to Edgeworth,now Edgeware, near London, came to settle in Ireland more than threehundred years ago. Roger Edgeworth, a monk, having taken advantage ofthe religious changes under Henry VIII., had married and left two sons,who, about 1583, established themselves in Ireland. Of these, Edward,the elder, became Bishop of Down and Connor, and died without children;but the younger, Francis, became the founder of the family ofEdgeworthstown. Always intensely Protestant, often intenselyextravagant, each generation of the Edgeworth family afterwards had itsown picturesque story, till Richard Edgeworth repaired the brokenfortunes of his house, partly by success as a lawyer, partly by hismarriage, in 1732, with Jane Lovell, daughter of a Welsh judge.
Their eldest son, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, was born in 1744, andeducated in his boyhood at Drogheda School and Dublin University.Strong, handsome, clever, ingenious, and devoted to sports of everykind, he was a general favourite. But his high spirits often led himinto scrapes. The most serious of these occurred during the festivitiesattendant on his eldest sister's marriage with Mr. Fox of Fox Hall, atwhich he played at being married to a young lady who was present, by oneof the guests dressed up in a white cloak, with a door-key for a ring.This foolish escapade would not deserve the faintest notice, if it hadnot been seriously treated as an actual marriage by a writer in theQuarterly Review.
In 1761 Richard Edgeworth was removed from Dublin to Corpus ChristiCollege at Oxford. There he arrived, regretting the gaieties of Dublin